For All of This
by Harper008
Summary: For everything that your best friend doesn’t know about you, take a drink. For everything your best friend does not remember, take a shot. For every minute you wish he would take the time to come back to you, pour another glass. Roughly 53 of all alcoholi
1. prologue

**For All of This;**

Prologue.

She was 17 years, 9 months, 4 days, and 2 hours when she broke the first promise that she had ever made to herself. The first in a string of many, the last in the fall of destruction. The night sky hung low, she remembers, because her skin felt like it were on fire, as if the heat of the stars was being brushed against her skin.

That nite she stopped counting.

She stopped adding and subtracting, she watched the empty vodka bottle, clear with light blue and black writing, go flying by her head, her mothers eyes watching regretfully, as if mourning for her poor aim, and at that second she realized that maybe it wasn't the drink that was doing this, maybe it was her mother.

Self-medication was always easy. It cost 9 dollars and 88 cents and you could get it at all times of the day, at all seconds of the night.

She was 20 years, 1 month, 3 days, and 19 hours when she realized that if she ever wanted to get away from her mother and her life, it would take more than some medication that she could pretend she didn't need.

On a page in a book with a navy blue cover she read about herself, painted in the short strokes of the statistics that listed her as just another victim. Just another lost one. Just another one of the 1 in 13 adults. Just another one of the 14 million Americans. Just another one of the 53 who had a bad gene, who had a fucked up relative who fell into this, who would drown in each drink they took, who would relax as they heard the ice hit the glass of their whiskey on the rocks. Who would smile at the soft sound of the wine coming together as it was poured into the glass. Who would pretend it didn't hurt as the Bacardi burned their chest. Who would steady their hands to raise the martini glass to their lips.

Self-deprecation was always easy.

She wasn't as bad as everyone else, was what she told herself. She got it down to two glasses of wine at nite. Wine was not what alcoholics drank, it was what classy women with diamond earrings and pearls drank because they were convinced it was good for their heart. She didn't let herself see that it was what was running through her veins now, red wine replaced her blood, traveled through her and to her heart and it kept her alive. Kept her going.

Self- preservation was always easy.

Almost 20 years later and she was still living each day by what she was not. Another day without succumbing to violence. Another day without taking a drink.

But almost 20 years, 4 months, 2 weeks, and 6 hours later she had started living each minute by what it was not. Living each minute against who she was not becoming. It seemed like suddenly, in one second, everyones lives had started fraying. The seams busted and the pieces became unglued and this all happened at once.

But, luckily, she was always good at self-medication.

&&&&&

She didn't ask Elliot to go and she didn't look at him when they asked because at this point it was like every refusal that he made was aimed directly at her. She felt like she was 17 years old again, having to dodge her mother's mistakes and scars and weaknesses.

And she hated him for it.

"I'm gonna go home." He stood behind her, and she did not turn around to face him.

She did not love him. If she had any feelings they were for his memory, what he was and what they were and she did not have any for this man before her, so caught up in what his life had become that he had forgotten that anyone else existed.

"Yeah, right." Her voice was thick and she wanted him to feel that she did not believe him.

For once second she forgot that for all of this she had nothing.

Elliot came around to face her, his eyes looking her over as if trying to read her, to identify her.

For all of this.

Olivia did not give him a smile; her eyes lingered against his for an instant. And for an instant she felt like he was there again. For an instant.

"Maybe you should go home." He stepped towards her, clearing his voice so that the words could be heard, and Olivia looked over to Casey and Munch and Fin, waiting for her to join them before heading out to drinks and dinner.

Olivia wanted to explain to Elliot that their company and the alcohol was better than being alone, that it was more than anything he was offering.

She stepped around him, called quickly to the group that she would not be joining them, and then headed out past him, she couldn't let his eyes look her over any longer, because she knew that he saw her pieces and that he would have tried to put her back together again before.

Would have. The old Elliot who came over for pizza and a beer and a meaningless conversation. The old Elliot who held secrets in his corners, left undone for Olivia to find with the clues he left her with.

Before she could get to the Elevator his voice stopped her, then his hand, grabbing her arm and turning her to face him. When she turned to him there was silence, and while it wasn't the first time, it felt like it was. This felt like the first uncomfortable moment, the first time words escaped them, the first time they couldn't hold the others eyes.

He looked her over for a resolution, for the one thing that would outstand the disaster that has leveled everything else in his life. He didn't notice that there were circles around her eyes, because he didn't want to. He didn't notice the gray in her skin because he didn't want to. He wanted to think that there was a reason for this, but Elliot Stabler knew better.

"Where've you been? I called you the last few nights, and you didn't answer." Olivia knew he was lying, but she knew that she couldn't refute it. And she didn't want to. At least she could play along with his lies.

It had been 10 hours and she is itching for what she has fallen into lately. She had to get out of there, but Elliot was standing before her, his eyes looking like they were about to ask the world of her.

"I've just been going to sleep early lately, I guess. Haven't felt too well." She shrugs, and Elliot takes a step towards her, but she takes a step away.

She doesn't know why he's doing this. Any of this, all of this.

"Well, yeah, okay," he said softly, ducking his head as he scratched at the back of his neck. "Everything okay, though? We haven't really had any time to catch up."

"We've had the time, we just never do anymore." The words hurt, they tore her up as they came from her without a second thought, and with him standing this close the only thing that she could let herself think was that she missed him.

"Is it still cold out?" Elliot looked away from the elevator and towards the stairwell a little ways off.

"Probably." She watched him walk to the door that leads to the stairs, and he stopped, looking to her for a moment before raising his eyebrows expectantly.

"C'mon Benson, we don't have all night." She let herself laugh, and it felt like it was the first time in months, the first time she remembered, at least, and then she ran over to Elliot, following him up the stairs to the roof.

He pushed the door open with a hard shove, and then stepped out into the Manhattan air, the stars hanging low and the wind taking them in.

"Here." Elliot took the scarf from around his neck and placed it tightly around Olivia's before taking his wool hat and pulling it over her head and this time it was her eyes that smiled. "So, how's everything? We've been kind of, scattered lately, I guess." He didn't want to admit all that had come between them. Life, for example. "Your favorite ice cream still mint chocolate chip? Or has the period for that run out? What do you like now? Something funky, probably, right? Java chip double chocolate brownie in banana flavored ice cream with a caramel swirl?" He didn't know if after a month of things being here and there if this was okay, but he had to jump in headfirst.

"Chunky Monkey, actually. You got the banana flavored ice cream part right." Her tone was soft, but defensive. Strike One.

Olivia looked away for a minute, out at the lights of the city that she could forget were people. For everything that your best friend doesn't know about you, take a drink. For everything your best friend does not remember, take a shot. For every minute you wish he would take the time to come back to you, pour another glass.

"Hey, remember when we used to come up here –"

"Elliot," she stopped him with his name, hard as it rolled through her lips. She didn't want to reminisce because she wasn't strong enough. She didn't have enough whiskey left for that.

"I wish I could – or, I know I can't – I mean," there were no words in his vocabulary at this moment, and he looked at her, a smile coming across his face, but it came from fear.

Strike two.

"Your collars messed up," Olivia spoke softly, reached to Elliot's neck and readjusted the collar of his coat, and she let her fingers linger for a moment on his neck before pulling herself away.

When your best friend looks at you like he doesn't know who you are, that's when you go for the vodka.

"This is gone too, isn't it?" The minute he said the words, the minute they were out, he knew they were the wrong ones.

Strike three.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you, Elliot. For a month we have nothing, and then you bring me up here and want me to 'remember when' in hopes that it will just all magically change?" She took off Elliot's hat and his scarf and she handed it back to him. She didn't believe in magic. She turned and took a few steps before stopping and turning back to him, "hey, El?"

Her voice stopped the breath that he so needed. "Olivia," he answered with her name, and she shook her head quickly. This, Elliot realized, is what it felt like to suffocate.

"Who do you go to now? Three am, late nite pizzas, cheesy movies."

In that moment Elliot had realized that everything that he hadn't lost he had pushed away.

When you're best friend realizes what he's done and makes no move to come to you, can find no words to help you, that's when you drink enough to not remember.

Olivia Benson always knew how to take care of herself.

Self-medication was always easy.

&&&&

to be continued.


	2. one

**For All of This;**

_One._

She opened the door as if she knew that he were on the other side, slow and cautious, planting herself between the opening and the rest of her apartment, not willing to let him in.

This was her world, this is what he gave her.

"Think I moved?" If he could look her in the eye he would have noticed that they were glassy, and if he could let himself look her over he would have noticed that her cheeks were flushed, her legs that of a sailor, shaky and bent slightly in an effort to hold herself up.

"What?" He wondered why she was standing wedged between the door and the wall, blocking his entry and view, and for a moment jealousy ran fresh and cold through his veins.

"Been a while since you've been here." She cleared her throat and straightened up and walked out into the hallway, shutting the door closed behind her before leaning up against it.

"Liv," he started, but she shook her head no.

"Olivia." She said loudly and widened her eyes. Even in the haze she had she knew that he wasn't allowed to be that close anymore.

"Look, Olivia," he was mad now, taking a step back and fumbling around with his hands because he did not know what to do with them. For an instant he felt like they were going back to the start, but this time he carried with him sin that she did not look ready to forgive. "I know that case today was rough on you, the little girl –"

"I'm fine." She didn't want to listen to his words because they were just soft formations with no meaning. No feeling. Regardless of what they were Olivia could only feel the unrest, she could only hear their loss.

"What do you want from me? Tell me and I'll try to do it." He was willing to try to put humpty dumpty back together again, but Olivia gave him an ironic smile. At a certain point she promised herself not to let this happen to her anymore, not to be someone's anytime, someone who waited around for when the other person they needed needed them, too.

She pressed the heal of her hands to her eyes, hard and strong until when she removed them she could only see black and a few carefully placed dots of light.

"You already did it."

"Olivia, c'mon. You know that this is hard, all this other stuff, and I'm just trying to figure it all out, you know that. Olivia, you know that." His repetition annoyed her because she didn't know that. She didn't know anything. "You're my partner. You're my friend," he paused for a minute to let her hang on the words, "are you listening to me?" His eyebrows came together as Olivia turned around to the door, her head falling back as she turned the doorknob.

"Fuck!" She kicked the door with the side of her foot and then turned back to Elliot, the light in her eyes come through in the tiled colors scattered throughout.

"You locked yourself out?" He looked her over cautiously, the air between them stale, and Olivia put one hand on her hip, the other going up to run through her hair.

"Thank you, Detective Stabler."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Elliot took a step towards her, the lucidity of her words concerning him.

She didn't answer with "you", although she wanted to, but instead she bit down on her bottom lip, trying to figure out how she was going to get out of this.

"Breath on me." He looked her up and down, dressed in a grey tank top and black cotton pants. She had not been out, and yet, she was not there with him either, when he forced his eyes to connect with hers he did not see the milky way, he wasn't traveling past Mars, but rather he was drowning in what she may have done. "Have you been drinking? Are you drinking again?"

Again. He spoke like he understood, like he knew there was a before, but he didn't, and Olivia wanted to tell him that anything he had seen was nothing. What she did was in silence. It was in her one bedroom apartment with food and plates and silverware for one. What she did was by herself, because that's all that she was anymore.

"Move." He pushed her aside and reached into his pocket for his keys, he ran over the different ones on the ring before finding hers and unlocking the door. "Olivia!" He said her name strong, strict, like a father calling his child back from the rough tides of the ocean. "Don't do this. Don't." He scolded her, and she wanted to tell him that he had no right, but on the counter sat an unfinished glass of rum and diet that was fogging out the situation, that was over coming him and her and what they no longer had.

She needed to take a drink because when he said that they were still friends, he did not include the word best as an adjective. She had fallen from this and from him and she didn't think that one more fall would matter all that much.

"Elliot," she paused for a minute to look over her mistake, and she didn't know she was crying until she tasted the mixture of alcohol on her tongue, salt and rum and whiskey and beer, "we work together."

Olivia was supposed to protect him, take a bullet for him, put herself in the line of fire, and in those three words, she did the exact opposite. In those three words, in all the 10,000 words they left unsaid, in all the million pictures that they left unpainted, Elliot could feel what she was telling him. He was like everyone else with a badge and a gun and a childhood fantasy that they could save the world.

"You're my partner." The words we strong, and Olivia was hoping for all the ones he hadn't spoken.

"I'm your 9 to 5. I walked in one day and you needed a partner. We were assigned to each other. That's all." Her words faltered, she stumbled upon them and over them as they came crashing from her lips, more destructive than a gun, a bullet, a knife. They were a single shot, straight and to the point.

"You know that's not true." Olivia stepped back into her apartment, her back facing her world of empty bottles and broken bottle caps.

"You didn't come to me. You didn't talk to me. You didn't tell me. That's not a friend, that's an inconvenience." She stopped, not telling him that she, more than anyone, knew what it was like to be an inconvenience. The feeling was not new or unique, it was something that came back to her with the same force each time, that feeling that makes your stomach drop, your hands itch. It is the moment at which you realize that those you hold valuable do not return to sentiment, it is in the moment in which you realize that your words are nothing but jumbled syllables falling on the deaf ears of those who mean the most to you.

Olivia Benson, with each of her finely placed scars, knew what it was like to be an inconvenience. Better off silent. Better off drowning. Better off with her self&medication.

Elliot was not the first, but with his blue eyes lost against the sea of his face, she knew that he would be the last.

"I'll see you tomorrow. At the station." Her words were clear, and Elliot shook his head, not about to accept this drunken rendition of what their lives had become. Her eyes were full of whiskey dreams and glassed over from the vodka and he was scared because at this point he didn't know what to do.

He stood there for three minutes, his mouth twisted and ready to form words, but he couldn't. His jaw clamped down, and he shook his head with frustration.

"You know you shouldn't be doing this," was all he could manage to say, and Olivia wanted to tell him that he should abide by his own advice.

"You know this isn't your place to tell me what to do," and with Olivia's pause Elliot pushed the door open, and startled, Olivia jumped back, watching him run to the glass that sat on the counter.

"Are you kidding me?" He turned to her when he saw the sink, filled with empty bottles that traced Olivia's path to where she now stood.

"They're from the past month or two. I just haven't taken them out," she lied.

He could feel the veins of his neck fill and push against the tight skin that contained them, he could feel his heart pounding against his ribs for freedom, and in his right hand he picked up a bottle of Absolut Vanilla Vodka, held it at her accusingly, and then, her eyes meeting his, unable to comprehend this situation, he realized that the bottle was heavy, too much, and he let it fall from his hand, the top of the bottle breaking off and shattering as it hit the kitchen floor and the rest staying intact as it rolled back and forth like a pin just assaulted by a bowling ball.

He couldn't handle this moment, although he knew that he had to. If he was going to prove anything to her he had to remain here and get an answer.

"How long has this been going on?" Olivia didn't answer him, she walked to the kitchen floor and collected the glass pieces of the bottle, not caring that they were scraping at her palm, her blood showing the tiny scars. "Stop, Olivia, what the hell are you doing? You're bleeding." Elliot bent down to where she was crouched down on the floor and grabbed her wrist before turning her hand over, the glass falling from it.

"I'm fine." Her eyes challenged him, fueled by the liquid courage that pushed everything inside of her to a dull ache. "Elliot," she had to get him out of there, "I'm sorry about Kathy. I could have done…ya know." She shrugged, and Elliot's eyes lighted, his heart retreating for a moment.

"Thanks, Liv." He gave her a soft smile and then the two stood slowly.

She had to get him out of there, and with a lie and a smile he would believe that she was okay and this was just a bad day because she knew that at this moment he wanted to.

"I should go, I guess." She didn't stop him, and with her nod as confirmation he headed towards the door.

&&&&&

"Elliot?" Cragen looked to the man before him with confused eyes, and Elliot gave him a faint smile.

"Can I talk to you for a minute? Do you have time?" For some reason Elliot seemed hesitant, soft, scared, and Cragen gave Elliot a nod, pushing his chair out a little ways from his desk and then motioning for Elliot to sit down.

"I though you'd left. Olivia's been gone for at least a few hours." He ran his hands over his tired face and then leaned back in his chair, looking to Elliot expectantly.

"Have you noticed anything off about Olivia lately?" Elliot did not look at him when he talked, the guilt hung like a weight around his neck, pulling his eyes to the floor.

"No." Cragen's answer came quickly after Elliot's question.

"Maybe not so much her work, maybe just how she's been acting? Has she been short with you? Anything like that?" He was fishing for something because he couldn't reconcile the scene from last nite as it played continuously in the corners of his mind.

"Elliot, what's going on? It seems like you're looking for something specific, like you want an exact answer here. Is everything okay? How are things going at home?" He realized there were boundaries, but he also knew there was a gun strapped to Elliot's belt and in the middle of the night the dark silence screamed.

"I'm," he knew there wasn't a right word to explain his state, he wasn't fine, he wasn't bad, uncertain, maybe, but he knew Cragen wanted something more than that, "okay. You know, you just do it, but, Olivia, anything? You see anything off?"

"Elliot, if you tell me what you're talking about, maybe I can help you out more. But as far as anything else goes, no, Olivia's been fine. Hasn't said anything to me, hasn't had any unusual behavior." With the answer he didn't want Elliot pushed himself up from the chair, kicking it out from underneath him. "Elliot," Cragen started, moving out from around his desk to face Elliot. "Something you want to talk about? You worried about something?"

"She's different." He muttered the words, and he felt their burden because he was the only one who knew them.

"Elliot!" Cragen called to his retreating form, but it was no use, he was gone.

&&&&&

He rubbed the spot on his finger where his wedding ring used to be as she approached him, her steps short and hurried, and she stopped beside him, leaning down to his ear to softly speak her intentions, "What the hell?"

"What?" His head turned to her quickly, his eyes searching her face for a resolution. Olivia did not answer his question, but she turned and headed towards the crash rom, Elliot knowing that her intention was for him to follow her, and he did so quickly, chasing after her rushed steps before finding himself in the room alone with her.

Before she spoke she shut the door, turned to him, her face red from frustration and anger, and she moved at him quickly.

"You talked to Cragen? About what? What the fuck are you doing, Elliot? What right do you have?" She demanded an answer, and Elliot grabbed her wrist, moving her finger out of his face.

"Don't act like there is nothing wrong," he challenged her.

"Don't act like I'm what's wrong, Elliot!" She growled his name, her breaths coming short and quick.

"Olivia, I'm worried about the other nite, about what was going on –"

"No, no, Elliot, you gave that up. You're so damn self involved, and I get it, I get what happened and I get it was hard, but I was there! I was there and you never fucking noticed, never gave me a second, a minute, nothing. But now you see something and you think it's your job to come in and save me?"

"Olivia, that's not, that isn't –" he knew she was right, but at the same time, he couldn't let her do this so easily. She was trying to let him go.

"Newsflash, Elliot Stabler, I don't need to be saved, especially by you." And with that she turned around, making her way to the door, and Elliot ran at her, pounding his hand against the door before she could open it, and he grabbed her arm, spinning her around to face him.

Her arm was pounding from the imprints left behind from his hand, and she looked him over like some stranger, some suspect, the man who had stolen everything she once knew and left her naked and alone with nothing to call her own. She understood his problems, but what she did not understand was the moment at which she became one of them.

"I know you, and I know something's up, I know this is turning into something, that it can, there's a line, Olivia, a fine line, and you know that."

"You don't know me, Elliot, that was just something we made ourselves believe because we had to reconcile dying for one another without ever really feeling that way." He felt every word of her statement, and they pushed him back as if he had just been hit full force. "See, Elliot," she was walking at him, "when something happens, something that we should be there for, we're not. You leave. You back away. I'm a burden. This friendship, is a burden. Doesn't take much to see that." She explained their lives to him, and he shook his head, his hands coming together so that he would not hit her.

"You don't get it, Olivia, you don't understand, and I'm not asking you to, but Jesus –"

"Hit me," she challenged, "I know you want to, so do us both the favor." She needed the physical scar.

"I'm not touching you," he breathed.

"You being a hero isn't going to save anything. You being so goddamn self righteous is going to do shit," she explained with wide eyes, "so, hit me. Do it."

His hand flew up, fingers curled into a fist, and with his arm over his head he watched her, watched everything he thought he had go to hell with everything she wouldn't let him do.

For a moment fear flashed in her eyes, not because of his lingering hand, suspended and waiting to make contact with her, but because this meant that he had really gone, the fact that he didn't know, that he didn't understand, that he thought it had not yet begun.

This was the moment at which she realized that she had lost him, and without his fist ever touching her, she felt the pain of a crippling blow.

Elliot's hand flew past her head and into the door behind her, his knuckles fighting against the thick wood for ground, and shoving tiny splinters into his skin.

When his hand moves back past her head, his knuckles starting to show the signs of blood and bruising, Olivia has bitten her lip so hard that there is blood, salty and forgiving, coming into her mouth. She licked it away with her tongue, and for a moment her eyes stood juxtaposed against Elliot's, all the darkness and deep brown freckles in them challenging the light blues of his own mosaics.

"You missed," she said, her voice faltering, and when she slammed the door behind her, Elliot knew that it was more symbolic, more detailed and said more than their words ever could.

It was over.

They were over.

&&&&

tbc.


	3. two

Author's note; Christina. That's all I have to say, I owe you so much for reading this while I write, giving me ideas, conspiring with me, all of that. You're amazing. At the end there are two lines from songs in italics. The first line is from 'What Makes You Stay' &Deana Carter, and the second is from 'When You Love Someone' – Brian Adams, they say it better than I ever could, so, I added them in there.

**For All of This;**

_Two._

"Look, Olivia, I don't know what's going on between you and Elliot, and as long as it's not interfering here, as your boss, I don't have to know. He comes in here the other day asking if I notice anything different about you, and then you come in today asking for a transfer?" Olivia wasn't looking at him, and he could tell that this was not easy. "So now, I get involved."

"This isn't about Elliot," she lied and he knew it.

"The hell it isn't." He leaned forward in his chair, daring her.

"If this was about Elliot, then why would I be asking for another department? Why wouldn't I just ask to switch with Munch or Fin? Wouldn't that make more sense?" Her hands were shaking, and she wondered if he could tell.

"What's going on, Olivia?" He wanted to believe that it was something good, that they were sharing a bed or breakfasts and dinners and dating and that this wasn't the rage that Olivia's eyes were holding.

"I'm asking you," her voice was soft, "please, I need to get out of here."

One night, after one more child, one more victim, one more perp, she realized that it didn't sting as much as it used to. Everyone was the same, regardless of their differences, regardless of the circumstances. One person had taken it upon themselves to permanently damage someone else, and it didn't bother her as much as it used to.

This wasn't doing it anymore. This wasn't going to save her, she was no longer hidden behind it and within it, but now she stood exposed with her numbed feelings, exposed and at a crossroad of who she could become.

Her whole life had been a battle of who she wasn't, never a fight for who she was.

She joined SVU for a variety of reasons, the greatest being that if she saw the violence everyday, if she saw the effects of it and the pain it caused, then she would never be tempted to commit it. If she put herself in a place in which she could convey her violence in a way in which it helped others, she would not only save them, but also herself.

She had her father in her. Half of her, sometimes more, sometimes less, and she fought each day against that which she had inherited from him, fought the nature versus nurture debate each day, and when she joined SVU she had this hope that as long as she was on this side of the violence, she wouldn't be tempted to do it. When she felt their pain, when she opened herself up to the empathy, she wouldn't want to do that to anyone.

But, she didn't feel it anymore. And now, with her father's genes dulled and silenced for the time being, now that she was at the end of her rope, abandoned by someone who she thought needed her, she felt her mother come through her, only, she knew, she told herself, she made herself believe, that it was not like that.

She was not like that.

"Fine," Cragen pushed the words through.

"Fine?" She was scared that he would let her go, up until this moment it made so much sense, but standing on the edge of what could be, she realized that this could be it.

Six years, and what did she have to show for it? Nothing. She could prove that violence did not end. That it was always there in some form, but it was not over, it was not close to being over. Six years, and nothing was different. Six years and she hadn't changed the world. She hadn't made people better or things better. She had watched children be raped, murdered, fathers violate their daughters, mothers murder their sons – and for what? The violence was still there, out there in and in her and she had made small steps at helping it, but she had not done anything to render it changed.

"Fine, Olivia, I can't make you stay here. But, before I get you transferred I want a reason. A good reason as to why I'm about to give up one of my best detectives."

"You just have to trust that I need this. That it's important and I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't."

"Wouldn't be asking what?" Elliot stood in the doorway, his voice an unwelcomed addition to the conversation, and Olivia sunk deep in her chair, not wanting the confrontation. Cragen let out a deep sigh, lowering his head, and Elliot looked back and forth between he and Olivia, suddenly nervous. "What?"

"I'm transferring." The words were one last blow, pushing him back up against the door because he knew that he couldn't hold himself up.

"You're what?" Maybe he hadn't heard her right.

"Transferring out of Special Victims. I'm done." She never looked at him. Elliot looked to Cragen for an answer, but he had none.

"You're done?" His voice wasn't argumentative, it was broken, detached, lost.

"Um, maybe I should give you two a minute. Olivia, you can explain yourself." He was their friend when he left them alone, closing his door behind him to give the two a moment of privacy.

"You're leaving me?" Elliot's words pushed themselves out, gaining a life of their own, and he looked away, the red rising to his cheeks, embarrassed by them.

"This isn't about you. This isn't about anyone, I just need a change, I can't do this anymore," her voice was soft and scratchy.

"Like hell it isn't about anyone, you think I'm stupid, Olivia?" He would have yelled if he had the energy, but he was falling into a period of insomnia, the circles under his eyes telling his secret.

"Say goodbye," she got up from the chair and faced Elliot, and she didn't want to see the wall of tears his eyes had built. "Just, say goodbye, Elliot." She didn't know how her voice didn't crack, and Elliot shook his head.

"We've seen it all, Olivia, look at us –"

"And for what? For every one we put away there are 10 more. Don't kid yourself into thinking that this matters."

Elliot swallowed hard. She was feeding him his suspicions, reading like a booklet on alcoholism, her eyes bloodshot, her attitude falling apart, what she loved before, what she was passionate about was now another thing to add to her list, another thing to make her take that drink.

"It does, Olivia, and you know it." He looked her over slowly, but she didn't budge, "or, you did." This was fear. The faith had gone from her eyes, leaving them as hollow as the day she came, like a child who had just had their innocence stolen for the first time, like a mother or father who had to watch.

"Goodbye, Elliot." She walked out of the door, pushing past him, and faintly, as if his senses were tuned to it, he could hear her start going through her drawers, cleaning out what used to be her life.

&&&&&

Her life sat a box in her living room, old pictures she put on her desk to make herself feel like someone else was there, old pens and papers and candy bars.

When you can fit your life in a box, that's when you pour half of the bottle of whiskey into your glass. When the pieces and parts of your life can fit into a tiny brown box, that is when you realize that everything you have is nothing at all.

That is when you realize that in that box one thing cannot fit, but he is gone and what you had is gone and that is when you take a drink.

A slow drink, her lips parting to take in the sweet surrender and she takes the liquid slowly, needing to feel the pain just a little to remind herself that she is still alive.

She places her drink down and reaches into the box, pulling out a pile of articles, some old, their paper aged in browns and tans, and she leafs through them, realizing that her small achievements were just that, small.

But, for a moment she takes in the people on the pages, the people she may have saved, the people she could have rescued. For a moment, in their names printed boldly in the pages, she saw her purpose.

Scared she let the papers fall from her hands, scattering around the floor beside her, one coming apart from the rest.

It was her mother's obituary, the quick story of her mother's life and death in 150 words. She didn't want to write it, she remembers, but Elliot made her, and she hated him for it. Olivia reaches for the little strip of paper, takes it into her hands for a brief moment, not letting her eyes scan over the words, and then she places the paper in her glass of whiskey, letting the ink of her mother's life fade into her drink.

The paper gets thin, soggy, floating down as Olivia pushed it deeper until her fingers come in contact with the alcohol. This was her mother's life, this drug that took her mother away from her, and Olivia stopped for a minute as she realized that it was taking her away from her, too.

But she still didn't want to think that it was an issue. She knew what she was doing, with each drink she knew she was giving herself over to statistics.

Her hand cupped the glass and she brought the drink, complete with her mother's fading, destroyed 150 word paraphrased life, to her lips and took a quick drink, thankful that the alcohol had dissolved the taste, among other things.

Her eyes caught one of the articles, it started off with her name, "Olivia Benson of the Manhattan Special Victims Unit, and her partner, Detective Elliot Stabler…"

Her throat burned, she put the glass down, and she realized that what had been her life was no longer. Everything that had defined her living was gone, and this, she realized, looking to her box of pieces, was death.

From within the papers stuck a corner, glossy with colors, and Olivia reached hesitantly for the picture, knowing what she was about to see – everything and nothing, that which she had just lost.

The picture is from when they first started together, six years ago. Elliot had insisted on bonding, insisting that it was important and they had to work at being able to know exactly what the other was thinking. She, of course, did not object, because his reasons were sound, his intentions clear.

So, a trip to Coney Island landed them on a roller coaster that Olivia had to convince him to ride, and when it was over Elliot bought her the picture, his face was red, his mouth open, screaming, and Olivia was laughing, her eyes, her mouth, all of her.

As her fingers ran over the edges she could hear him, hear his voice in her memory, telling her that every time she thought against jumping in front of a bullet for him, remember that he rode this for her, screamed the whole way scared of the old wooden "death trap", as he called it, but he rode it none the less, because she asked him, because she wanted to.

Because when she was six years old her mother took her to that same rollercoaster, stood at the bottom with her, her hands sweating and smelling of alcohol, her eyes bloodshot, her life bruised, and she told Olivia that she could ride alone, that she wasn't about to die for her.

Olivia had left that out. Olivia didn't tell him that. Olivia cried, told him it was from the wind against her eyes, but she knew, inside, that it was because for the first time in her life she felt like someone had her. Like someone would die for her.

Pushing herself up from the floor she grabbed her glass and ran into the kitchen, the tears on her face not processed against everything else that was running through her mind, and she dumped the whiskey out into the sink, dropping the glass in after it and then running back to her bathroom, bending over and throwing the cabinet doors under the sink open and reaching in for the bottles she had hidden, and in this moment she remembered being 10 years old, walking in and seeing her mother rooting under the bathroom sink for another bottle of that which sustained her, and it was in this second Olivia had realized that she had become her mother. She had been so scared and determined not to be her father, that when Elliot had left her, had taken time for himself to figure himself out she coped the only way she knew how – they only way that she had ever been taught.

And she fell to the bathroom floor, not wanting to understand anymore.

&&&&&

He had to believe in her now.

He had to take this as a simple act of their faith and he had to believe that this was something that would not break them, that would build them instead.

He turns the corner to her apartment with his cell phone in his hand, all that's running through his mind is her voice, soft and lacking words, drowning in her sobs. In his other hand he's sorting out his keys, looking for the one to her apartment, and in a scared desperation he finds himself moving faster, his feet starting to run, his mind starting to swirl.

This is what he did. He knew her life, knew of all the people who didn't need her, and he was one more now, another name on her list of millions, another one lost in her pool of thousands.

He wondered if the rest of them felt their heart, this strong and quick, when they thought that they were about to lose her.

"Olivia!" He is startled by her, standing still a few feet before him, her arms crossed over her chest, pulling herself inward.

She doesn't answer him, her head goes to him slowly, her eyes saying finally, and when he gets closer he can see that she is shaking, her mascara running trails down her cheeks, and he doesn't know whether or not to hug her, to take her into his arms, because he doesn't know if that's okay. If he was the only number she knew or if she was the only number she wanted to dial.

Without thinking he drops his cell phone and keys, freeing his hands to take inventory of her pieces, to touch her face, run a hand around to the back of her head, down her neck, to run his fingers over her arms, over the bruises he's left her with, and then down her waist, to her stomach.

"Jesus," he mutters the name softly, a prayer, a thanks, for her being in one piece, at least physically.

She isn't moving, aside from her body shaking, her eyes letting her tears fall, and Elliot can tell that she is numb, that she is suffering from this and he wants to think that he knows how to fix this, but in him, with all the parts of him that have been shaken recently, he can feel that he doesn't know how.

"I&I shut the door," she stammers, softly, admitting, without saying the precise words, that she had to lock herself out of her apartment, out of the liquor cabinet that is her home.

"Okay, that's okay." He gives her a soft nod, and then, against all his judgment, he pulls her in for a hug, which she does not return, but he doesn't care, because he has to feel her breathing to erase the fear of all the possibilities in which he could have found her. "It's freezing out here, come on, let's go back inside," Elliot bends down to pick up his phone and keys, slipping the phone into his pocket, and then turning to Olivia expectantly. "Olivia, come on," but she doesn't move.

"This isn't my life." She is shaken by her newfound reality, and Elliot swallows hard.

"Tonite it is," is all that he says, heading towards the door, and in a moment she follows in step behind him.

He stops when he walks into her apartment, Olivia still behind him, and he is caught off guard by what he sees, by the smell, by the box of things that were once in her desk now scattered about her floor.

"Okay." He takes a deep breath after the hesitation and walks in farther, Olivia closing the door behind them. "Okay." He turns to find her walking slowly to the couch, as if in a trance, and she sets herself down in the middle slowly, leaning back and looking ahead, her eyes hollow and lost.

For all of this, for all of the things she tried not to become, here she was.

"Under the sink, in the bathroom," she tells him, her voice soft, and Elliot feels himself fall, letting this overtake him as he heads back to the bathroom, crouching down to the cabinet under the sink, looking to the bottles lined up.

"Jesus Christ, Olivia." As he is pulling the vodka and the whiskey and the rum from under the sink, each bottle serves to remind him that he left her, that he wasn't here for this, that he didn't see this soon enough, that he was too caught up in everything else to realize what he was doing to the one person who actually wanted to be there.

With each bottled he mourned their friendship. With 5 bottles in his arms he walked slowly, sullenly, a funeral precession out from the bathroom, a lump in his throat, his eyes burning with the threat of tears.

He wasn't mad, he couldn't be. The guilt, the sorrow, it occupied every inch of him and left no room for any other emotion. He wanted to make this better, he had the overwhelming urge to protect her, but he knew, at the same time, that he was clueless.

She can hear him set the bottles on the counter, and the noise is deafening, she shudders, the tears in her eyes no longer able to spill, frozen by her numb emotions.

"Um, Liv," he heads into the living room, standing amongst the scattered pieces of her on the floor, scattered parts of them, and he sees the picture from all those years ago, the glimpse he catches long enough, and he goes back to her. "Olivia&"

"Over the microwave." She cuts him off, and he is shaking now as he walks into the kitchen, opening the cabinet over the microwave to find a couple bottles of beer, and he removes them, setting them on the counter with the rest of what he has found.

Instead of going back out he turns back to the oven, walks over slowly, and pulls the door back. Falling back, his legs giving out on him, he calls to her, "and in the oven."

"And in the oven," she repeats quietly.

After a moment, when he trusts his legs again, he pushes himself up, gathering the 3 bottles of vodka and one bottle of red wine, and places them with the others, their contents all half empty at best, their lids all tightened back on with force and regret.

"Olivia," he is scared, and she can tell.

He sees her before him, a fragmented part of what she used to be, and he realizes that he's began to pace, that he's running his hands through his short hair, scratching nervously at the back of his neck.

Tonite isn't about all he has lost, but rather, all he has found.

"Olivia, I need your gun." She isn't expecting the words, and her head shoots up immediately, looking at him as though he has just spoken another language. "I know you brought it home, where is it?" He looks at her, he doesn't blink, doesn't breath, doesn't pretend that there aren't tears in his eyes.

With her broken before him, what she has been doing set out before him, plain and clear for him to see, he realizes that he has never missed anything or anyone as much as he misses her at that instant.

"You need to give it to me." His voice shakes, cracks, and Olivia's lips come together, shaking as she turns away from him, pulling her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around herself.

He falls to the floor, exhausted and beaten, and before he can comprehend what he is doing the picture of both of them from the rollercoaster so many years ago is in his hand.

"I was so scared, the wood looked like it wouldn't hold Dickie's hampster, and you wanted me to ride it with you, and I was freaking out," he paused, swallowing the regret of the memory, "but when we were on there, you were so happy, you couldn't stop laughing and for a few minutes, while the ride lasted, I knew that this was going to work."

"I thought so too. You were the first person to ride it with me," she admits for the first time after a long pause, her voice muffled against her legs.

This isn't in his head anymore, this isn't in his heart or his memory, but this is taking over all of him, he is hurting, burning, aching.

There are no words between them, and in the silence Elliot finds himself moving to her, dropping the picture back to the ground and in the next second he is curled up next to her on the couch, pulling her into his arms, holding her, holding her against him physically as a substitute for that which he cannot hold.

"Stay with me, okay? Talk to me, make me understand this." He reaches out to her, speaking softly as he rests his chin on the top of her head, and he can feel that she is embarrassed, he can feel that it took every piece of her to call him, to admit this to him, to let him see her secrets.

Olivia Benson, once indescructable, has crumbled. Broken. Fallen apart.

She hates that she needs him when he never needed her, she hates that he is all that she has, but in his arms, pressed to him, breathing in time with him, she knows that she can't move away, that she isn't strong enough, because tonite she is at the end of a road she promised she would never take.

He doesn't need her like her mother didn't need her, like no one has ever needed her, but she gives into this tonite because admitting to this is more powerful, better, than falling into who she really could be.

"I guess I'm no better than she was. I guess all the stuff I told myself, I guess I've been lying to myself, too, everyone else does and then I just fall into it too, I guess…" she trails off, erupting in sobs, and Elliot pulls her closer still, willing her flesh to mold with his, willing her pain to dissolve into his, willing himself to take this on for her.

"I want to tell you that I'm sorry, Olivia," he whispers, and she wants to tell him that she doesn't care because regardless of how she got here, here she is none the less.

He clenches his jaw when he feels her hands clawing at his shirt, pulling through to his skin, when he realizes that she is trying to hold on to him, to keep him there.

"It's okay." His voice shakes and is not strong and assuring, but broken and scared, but she doesn't care, she can feel him, for the first time in months, when she doesn't even know herself she can feel him, and without letting herself think of everything else, she falls into him. She lets herself need him.

"Elliot," there is more to say, but she collapses in silence, and he pulls away, but her hands cling to him, grabbing for him. He holds her away from him, out at an arms length, and makes her lock eyes with him.

_What makes you stay, when the world falls apart?_

"Yeah, Liv, yeah," his voice is thick with emotion, and he pulls her back to him. "Yeah, I'm here."

_you'd risk it all & no matter what may come, when you love someone_

&&&&&

tbc.


	4. three

**For All of This;**

_Three._

It was neutral territory, his two-bedroom apartment that he had hidden in since his life had gone to hell. He didn't know how to handle what was going on, and he knew that he couldn't leave it up to Olivia, so he brought her here, to a shelter and an empty space that he filled with pictures, moments of memories of all that used to be his life.

"Elliot?" She came from the spare bedroom that he had convinced himself was for his kids, when the visited, but Olivia was the first person to ever occupy the room.

"Hey there," he cleared his throat as he spun around from the computer, minimizing the window he was looking at, blinking his eyes a few times to adjust to the dark of the room without the bright light of the screen.

"It's bad for your eyes to be on the computer in the dark," this was filler conversation, but it was all she could manage.

Her head hurt. Her hands were shaking a little bit, her eyes burning.

"Still can't sleep?" He knew that the words were sounds that meant nothing at this point, that at this point it was not about what he said, but what he saw. He was on watch, keeping an eye on what she did and didn't do for the last 36 hours.

His eyes were bleeding, and in his mind, the words, the reality, everything that she had become – he had read about her on the Internet, one of those information sites that lists symptoms and signs and she was all of them.

With his newfound knowledge he now felt more helpless than ever.

"Do you have any oranges?" She calls to him as she heads towards the kitchen, opening the fridge to find a single orange, a bowl of green grapes, a carton of milk, and a few other scattered items.

At first, she clung to him, she needed him there and with her and he had to keep her away from herself, but now she saw what he was doing, realized what she had asked.

He himself had his footing deep in sinking sand, that was all he could offer her, a hand to help her up to nothing but the sinking ground on which he stood.

It had been 36 hours, 19 minutes, and 39 seconds, give or take, since she'd had her last drink. Elliot had unplugged the clocks, but he forgot about the microwave, the time displaying itself in little dashes of illumination, and she glanced into the living room where Elliot sat staring out into space.

He couldn't help her; at this point he couldn't even help himself. She was mad, angry, annoyed, sad, because he was all she had, and yet, he didn't even have himself, and he surely didn't have her the way that she needed.

He was playing father because that's what he was used to, that was his role, and without his kids around him all the time, and with Olivia succumbing to needing someone – him, the only person around, he stepped right in and started playing house.

Playing house in a flimsy house of cards, cemented on sinking sand, held together by nothing but gravity, and she knew that a tiny breath would destroy it all.

She had to get out of there.

"You find the orange?" He pushed himself up out of the chair with a deep breath and then headed into the kitchen as the sun started to sneak through the windows.

"I love the smell of orange peels," she said as she peeled the rind off of the orange and then handed the fruit to Elliot, heading into the living room, smelling the sweet, citrus smell.

"You don't want to eat it?" He looked at her confused.

The peel smelled like Absolut Mandarin, it played on her taste buds, the scent letting her pretend, for a minute, that she wasn't stuck here, regardless of if she had blindly asked to be.

"You want to watch a movie?" Elliot asked as he joined her in the living room, pulling the orange apart into its pieces, popping on into his mouth before offering one to Olivia.

"I can't eat," she paused for a minute, "you want to tell me what you were looking at on the computer?"

"Porn." He shrugs nonchalantly, but she doesn't smile. She doesn't laugh. This isn't funny. She knows what he was doing, and at this point she would rather that it was looking at a 23&year&old brown haired blue&eyed goddess bound in leather.

"Try again." She swallows hard, pulling at the neck of her t&shirt, suddenly feeling nauseous.

"Checking my email, the kids email me before they go to school," another lie, and she knew it.

"I don't need you to lie to me, Elliot," she finished and pushed herself up quickly, the bile rising in her throat, running back to the bathroom, clawing at the neck of her shirt, falling to her knees before the toilet, heaving the contents of her stomach up, and between purges she grasped for air, heaving and inhaling and taking it, searching for it, her veins thick, her neck red, her eyes watering.

When he walked into the bathroom, he stopped cold for a minute before speaking, "Shit, Olivia," he forced his voice to sound clam, but he knew that it didn't, that around the edges it was shaky and unsteady. "Okay, okay," he bent down beside her and pulled the hair back from her face with one hand, and with the other he reached to the sink, a washrag sitting on the top, and he flicked the cold water on, soaking the rag in it.

With one of her hands clutched to the porcelain toilet, the other grabbed aimlessly, searching for something else to hold onto, and when Elliot's hand came back from preparing the cold washcloth, her hand found his instantly. Dropping the washrag he let her fingers intertwine with his, squeezing tightly.

"Okay, alright, Liv, just calm down, it's okay," his voice was soft and comforting.

He was a good father.

With each breath she couldn't catch, she was embarrassed, embarrassed that this was who she was, embarrassed that her stomach burned and that all she wanted was another drink. One more glass. One more bottle. That's all, and then she would be finished.

Elliot had comforting words and nice gestures, but he didn't understand.

When she fell back from the toilet, back onto her butt, her legs going out in front of her, she saw Elliot's eyes, how they looked at her like they looked at the victims. How they saw her as another number, another percent, another statistic. How they saw her as something he could put himself in so that he wouldn't have to deal with his own statistics.

Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.

"You okay?" Elliot reached for the cold rag and ran it over Olivia's face, over her lines and dark circles under her eyes, over her graying skin, and he had to remind himself to be strong.

"Don't pity me, Elliot." Her head fell back against the wall, and Elliot pressed the washrag to her forehead, tiny beads of cool water slipping away, sliding down her cheeks.

In the other room the microwave revealed that it had almost been 37 hours since she had her last bit of alcohol.

"Who said I pitied you?"

"You were reading about it, reading all those stupid numbers that people who have no clue about this – old men in lab coats, they got those numbers, they don't mean anything," she wished that she could believe herself.

"Hey, Olivia, I was just doing some reading," his brows furrowed, wondering if he had the strength to do this, to dive in without know how deep he would be going. Wondering if he had enough air. If he could hold his breath this long, "I, I don't know how to do this," he admitted, "I'm just, I'm trying and I&"

"Wanted to see what you were getting yourself into? Look, Elliot, I needed help, and I called you. You think it was easy? You think going to you after all of this – just, all of the nothing we had was easy?"

Agitation. He'd read about that.

"Okay. Okay, I know, you're right. I get it." The phone rang, Dickie and Liz were calling him on their way to school. He didn't answer. He stayed with Olivia, shoved into his tiny bathroom, looking for something in each other that neither possessed.

"Don't fucking humor me." On shaky legs she got up slowly, walked into the spare bedroom, an addition to Elliot's life. A guest. Her body was still shaking, and she fell onto the bed slowly.

"We should go eat." Elliot was standing in the doorway. "I'd make something, but I don't have any food,"

"And you're not leaving me here alone, right?" She finished for him. "I'm not hungry," she continued, looking away from him, feeling as if the walls were closing in on her.

"You need to eat. C'mon, we'll just go into McDonalds or something, get one of those pancakes filled with syrup sandwiches or whatever, and bring it back." He smiled, hoping that she would catch it, and her eyes met with his for a long moment, sizing him up, he knew.

"I need to go into the station today. I need to talk to Captain Lucas about tomorrow." She got up from the bed and started out of the room, down the hall to the door, and Elliot grabbed his keys, following her out.

"About tomorrow? Olivia, you can't be serious," he didn't mean to scoff, and she turned to him quickly as they reached the bottom step, pushing the door open to the cool, early morning air.

"What, you want me to stay here so you can babysit me? Want us to take off for a week or two so you can watch me and make me your little project?"

He didn't answer, because his words would have pushed themselves out with angry connotations, loud and accusing, so instead he fell a step behind her, walking up two blocks to the nearest McDonalds.

&&&&&

His eyes were dark, reflected in the deep circles that hung under them, baggage of everything he had seen.

"Can we walk to that little grocer up the street?" Olivia approached him as the sun was setting, he was seated on the couch, nodding and smiling, with a phone to his ear, listening to the conversation.

"Yeah, Dickie, that's amazing. Okay…okay, yeah, yeah, go do your homework. Okay, I'll see you in a few days. Love you too, bud." He moved the phone from his ear, clicking it off and throwing it onto the couch next to him.

"The kids?" She asks, shoving her hands into her pockets, wondering how much he really wants her there, or how much he's using her to avoid everything else.

"Yeah," he nods, giving her a sad smile. "What'd you ask?"

"I want pickles," she smiled, and Elliot gave a short laugh.

"Pickles?"

"Yeah, I'm craving salt," she scratched at her head, "so, pickles. Can we go buy some?"

"Halves, or spears?" He wants to remember her smiling because he knows that it won't last long. He knows that they're peaking, steady atop the hill, and soon something will come to push them down.

For miles and miles, all he can see are peaks and valleys.

"Baby dills," she throws him his coat and heads to the door.

"Baby dills, really?" He gives her a soft look, and she shakes her head, laughing gently as they step outside and head out in the direction of the little grocery store.

"Yes, baby dills. What's wrong with them? They're the whole pickle – but, smaller."

For a minute she forgets that she has not taken a drink in 50 hours and 7 minutes.

"Yeah, but you don't get the essence of the pickle, Olivia, I mean, come on."

"Are we really discussing this?" She asks for a minute, her nose scrunching up with her smile. "And how do you not get the essence, El? It's the whole pickle!"

"With the baby dills, it's all skin, the outer layer. There isn't enough of the pickle. Spears are the way to go, really, there is no other option." He pulls the door of the grocer open for her, and she pauses for a minute, catching her eyes in his.

"Thank you," her voice cracks, it is small and soft and thankful – scared.

"Yeah, yeah, go get your little miniature excuses for pickles." They laugh, and he follows her into the store.

&&&&&

"Aw, shit, Olivia," He blinks the scattered sleep from his eyes with urgency, running his hand over his face quickly, grabbing the washrag on the sink, and then bending down next to her, pulling her hair back in one hand, taking her hand in the other as she dry heaved, her back curling, her chest burning, coughing as she grabbed for air.

"I can't do it, I can't do this." Her arm wraps around the top of the toilet, she drops her head against it, her face looking down into the bowl.

Her mother is going through her mind, her bottles, her temper, her words, and she now realizes why she never did this. Before, years ago, Olivia wasn't where she was now. She was young, it wasn't as hard to go from 5 drinks a nite to two. It was acceptable. But now, now Elliot was watching her, making her stop cold turkey, and she knew that this wasn't right. It wasn't okay. She wasn't okay.

"Here, babe," the term of endearment slips out, there is no extra connotation, no extra meaning, and Olivia falls back from the toilet, looking to Elliot, shaking her head.

He says nothing, tightens and locks his jaw as he moves the washrag over her face. It is the third time tonite, the fourth time in the last so many hours.

62 hours, 12 minutes – the clock on the microwave was still working.

"Domestic Violence," the words come out of the blue, and Elliot pulls his hand from her face, looking at her with confused eyes.

"What?"

"I need to go back to work. That's where they had room, that's where I'm going," she explains, and Elliot's head falls back, not wanting to admit that he thought her crazy charade of leaving SVU would be short lived.

"You really think that's the best idea?"

"Sitting here, in your apartment, isn't a better one. If I'm at work I have distractions. Something else to do, you understand." Her words are biting, and Elliot nods. He understands, throw yourself into your work to avoid everything else.

He understands completely.

"But transferring out?" He gets up, dropping the rag down to Olivia.

"You can get a tracking device. Put it on my belt," she shoots him an icy look.

"That's not what I'm talking about," four deep breaths, count to ten – this isn't her, this is the spell she's under.

"You don't get it, and I'm not asking you to." She throws the washrag at him and heads out of the bathroom, back into the spare room.

When she sits on the bed, she is shaking. She is alone, in Elliot's make believe world and the aftermath of her failure. And he doesn't come right away. Minutes go by, maybe 5, 10s of them, and still, he never comes. She doesn't hear him the house, her headache, it is pounding over her eyes, blinding almost, drowning out sound.

Another minute. Another two. She was five years old when her mother left her for two days with a bag of chips and peanut butter. She had aged 10 years by the time she came back.

Three more minutes and he still wasn't there. She wonders if she'd done it, if her words had beaten him, pushed him away, if he was back to where he was a few days ago before she conceded to needing him.

Her back arches, and she leans backwards, laying herself down on the bed, pulling her knees to her chest, tucking her head and squeezing her eyes shut.

68 more seconds. Still nothing. She pulls herself in more, in the dark she sees her mother, sees her own failure, feels herself falling.

She wants a drink. She doesn't care. It doesn't matter. She's almost 40 years old, who is she doing this for?

When she wakes up, when her eyes blink open, there is a cold rag pressed to her forehead, fingers are running through her hair, his body his sitting against hers, the mattress sunken from where he's sitting, her body rolling towards him.

It was 8am. He wasn't taking Dickie to his soccer game, he told him he couldn't today, that he had to work on a case, and when he looked to Olivia, curled up on the bed next to him, he knew that he didn't know how to fight for this victim.

"Elliot?" Her voice is that of a child's, soft and scared.

"Here, take two Tylenol. You're burning up." He clears his throat as he hands them to her, and Olivia swallows them promptly.

"You've been out for a few hours," he leans back against the headboard of the bed, and Olivia rolls over, taking the cold washrag from him and closing her eyes for a moment.

"Did you sleep?" She can see in his eyes that he hasn't, and his silence is her confirmation of such. "Why are you doing this?" Guilt fills her now, a strong sense that she is not worthy of his actions, of him sitting up while she passed out, watching her shake, keeping an eye on her temperature.

"You want me to do this?" He looks to her slowly, and she bites down on her bottom lip, surveying him slowly, cautiously, as if she is seeing him for the first time.

"Uh, yeah," she pauses, "yeah."

"Then that's why." He gives her his answer, simple and soft, and she accepts.

&&&&&&

"You think he really paid her to sign a five year contract?"

"Huh?" Elliot sets the bowls on the coffee table and then heads back into the kitchen to get them a drink.

"Tom Cruise, you think he got Katie Holmes to sign a five year contract to pretend to marry him, but they wouldn't have sex?"

"Um, Olivia? Are you speaking English?"

"There's no way it's real, I mean, he's running around and jumping on couches and, for what? I don't care if he's in love. Doesn't change my life any, I mean, good for him, he's getting some&"

"Not if she signed a contract." Elliot calls back through a smile, and Olivia laughs softly.

She'd been with him now for seven days, at the end of the day they would come back together, and in the moments that she didn't feel smothered by him, she was thankful for him.

"What's this?" Elliot sits down next to her and hands her a glass of sparkling apple cider, offering her a smile, and toasts her.

"One week." He answers proudly, and Olivia tugs at the neck of her sweater, feeling as if she is overheating.

To get him back all she had to do was become addicted. It's unsettling to her, and when Elliot isn't looking, when she's at her new desk, across from her new partner, there is a tiny bottle in the bottom drawer. A tiny bottle to add to her coffee in the morning, and she doesn't care because she isn't doing this to Elliot, this is for herself.

"I was going to cook a nice dinner, but I can't cook, so, I made pasta." He nods towards the bowls, and Olivia doesn't let herself feel guilty. She is doing better. One or two secrets aren't the end of the world. Elliot needs someone to take care of, she can see this, see that he needs it, and she lets him do that for her.

It isn't about lying to him, it's about them both lying to each other.

"Thanks, El." She takes a bit of the pasta and then a sip of the cider, trying to forget that she is instantly disappointed that it is not champagne. "I, um, tomorrow nite, Casey asked me to go to dinner with her and Fin and John. I haven't really seen much of them all week, so," she had to remind herself that she didn't need his permission.

"Yeah, they asked me too." There was hesitation on both parts for a moment, and then Olivia spoke.

"I'm gonna go, Elliot. Just dinner, I mean, what harm can that do?"

"Yeah, yeah. It'll be good for you," he wanted to believe the words, but he wasn't quite sure that he could, not yet. "But hey, maybe I'll catch up with you guys later on, I think I'll go see the kids for a little while while you're with them."

Guilt.

"Elliot, I don't mean to be keeping you from them, you can go –"

"Hey, let's just eat, okay?" He turned away, the conversation was over.

&&&&&&

"So, Olivia, how are those jerks over at domestic treating you?" They are seated a booth in the back, John Munch nursing a beer, waiting for Olivia's answer to his question.

Her fingers play along the rim of the glass of her water, and she looks around at the three before answering.

"It's different," she shrugs.

"You with Daniels, right? I knew him from back at the academy, he's a good guy." Fin chimes in, and Olivia nods, agreeing.

He's a nice guy. 6 feet even, dirty blonde hair, round black eyes. They go in and they talk to husbands about their wives, talk to kids about pulling knives on their parents, investigate cases where a husband murdered his wife and daughter and son.

It's work.

"Mark Daniels?" It's Casey's turn now, "god, he's gorgeous." She takes a sip of her beer, and Olivia can hear the liquid move in the bottle.

"You miss us though, don't you?" John sits back and gives her a smirk.

"She misses me, of course, I don't know who would miss you." Fin rolls his eyes, and the four share a soft laugh.

Olivia looks over to the bar quickly, and while it is a casual dinner, she can feel the tension, over what, she does not know, but she isn't comfortable, she is fidgeting.

Elliot called earlier to check on her, and when he found out that they were at McGinley's, a pub, he was anything but okay with it.

Guilt, again, looking at all their faces she could only ear the disappointment in Elliot's words.

She looked to the bar again. Big brother wasn't watching her tonite.

"Hey, I'm gonna go get a beer, I'll be back." She didn't wait to hear them, her hands started sweating, shaking, and she moved in one quick motion to the bar, squeezing in at the end, her hands running through her hair nervously as she ordered a Budweiser and then stood waiting while the bartender headed to the opposite side of the bar to get it for her.

"I'd ask for an explanation, but I don't even think I want one." The voice growled the words, thick and hard, and she spun around to face him immediately.

"I'm just getting a coke."

"In a Budweiser bottle?" His eyes are flames as the grey haired bartender sets the beer down in front of Olivia.

"Elliot, come on, it's one drink," she tries, but she knows he will not let her get away with it.

"You fucking kidding me? All those nights, they're worth it for one drink?" He steps back and looks her over once, "you can't have one fucking drink, Olivia." And in the next moment, in her silence, he sees it.

For all of this, there is nothing.

This is not the first time, her eyes, their betrayal, their embarrassment, they show that this is simply the only time that he caught her.

Before she can form an argument, her head is pounding, and Elliot is pushing through the people in the pub, pushing his way out into the air.

For all of this, he hadn't been with his children. He had tricked himself into thinking that he could hide in this masquerade, but in this instant, this second, he sees all the stars fall from the sky, there is darkness, blinding darkness, and in a mad sprint he is running towards the station, his hands shaking, caught in his own withdraw.

Throwing the door open he ran for the stairs, sprinting up to the third floor, Olivia screaming his name behind him, she may have been crying, but he wasn't paying attention, he was furious, he was in a place he didn't even know was possible.

"What are you doing! Elliot!" Her voice was a shriek, she seemed scared for her life, and that only fueled his suspicions. He threw the door open to her new unit, ran over to her desk, threw open the top drawer and started searching through everything. "Elliot! What the hell are you doing, you have no right!"

"Do not speak to me, Olivia." He stopped, his back to her, and froze for a moment, his hands burning, his arms tingling, his head pounding. After pulling open three drawers, rummaging through their contents, he found it, a small clear bottle, Absolut Vanilla written on the front, and his hands shook, his fingers overly sensitive to the touch as he pulled it from the drawer.

"Elliot, I can explain,"

"I don't want to hear it," and he threw the bottle at the ground, shattering into tiny pieces, and Olivia's eyes, brimmed with tears, did not faze him.

"You know what I gave up because I thought you were serious about this?" He looked her over, wondering how deep in this lie he was invested. "Your stuff will be out front of my door. Don't knock. Don't call."

It was the wrong way of dealing with this, and he knew it, but all that he had given up, all that he had let slip away in the last week that he had given to her, it made him feel as if she had played him for something he was not, and he couldn't do this.

"See ya around, Detective," he growled and pushed past her, and with tears tracing trails down her cheeks, Olivia bent down to pick up her pieces.

&&&&&

tbc


	5. four

Author's Note; The lyrics used at the end, are, again, from When You Love Someone – Bryan Adams. That's it, really, enjoy!

**For All of This;**

_Four._

"Casey Novak?" He knocks softly on her office door before pushing it open, his brown eyes looking to her in question.

"Detective Daniels," she notices him immediately, and for a minute she has to wonder why he is there, "is there something I can help you with?"

"Uh, yeah, maybe," his voice is thick, and it matches his rugged look, five o'clock shadow, messed up hair. If anything he is the opposite of Elliot. "Detective Benson hasn't shown up yet today, she's two hours late, and we called the phone number we have for her, but she didn't answer. I remember her saying that she was going to dinner with you and some other detectives in your unit last nite, so I was just wondering if you maybe knew where she was? Or another way to get in touch with her? We only just started together, and I thought&"

"She didn't show up to work?" Casey was walking out from behind her desk, immediately becoming worried at how out of character that was for Olivia, and after the scene last nite, with her chasing a red and angered Elliot out of the pub, she could only imagine all that could have happened.

"No, and from what my Captain and I&"

"I'll go talk to her old partner, maybe he knows what's up," Casey cut him off, suddenly every scenario that she didn't know threatened her and she pushed out of her office, Detective Daniels, a sad replacement for Elliot, following behind. "I'll let you know if I find anything out." She gave him parting words, he nodded his thanks, and then headed back upstairs while Casey headed down to Special Victims, where she found Elliot sitting at his desk, his head resting in his hands.

There was no one across from him, they hadn't found anyone willing to join SVU yet, and as a consequence Elliot had mainly been riding the desk, save the few times Munch had been in court and he got the chance to go out with Fin.

"Elliot," she started walking faster when she saw him, having to remind herself not to ask too many questions.

"Casey, hey," he blinked his eyes, stretching them open, and she could immediately tell that he was aggravated.

"Elliot, where's Olivia?" She didn't think that him not knowing was even an option.

"I don't know, did you check domestic?" He ran his hand over his face, trying to remember the last time he really slept, but all he could recall were the nights of a restless insomniac's dream.

"She didn't show up to work, she's not answering her phone," Casey informed him, and he looked her over slowly, not wanting to feel the panic that was starting to settle within him.

He felt them going down again, after last nite, after looking at her lies, after throwing them at her, shattering them on the ground, he walked away and for the first time he honestly didn't know when the next time that he would talk to her would be.

"Elliot, this isn't like her – you don't know where she is?" Casey pressed, and Elliot let out a deep breath.

"Can't say that I do, Casey." He wished that he could not care about this. He wished that he could slow down his heart as it began to beat a little faster.

"And you're not worried?" His behavior, she couldn't tell if he was trying to be cool, or if he really was this apathetic. His hands, though, she noted, they slid together, sweating, and she could tell that he was fighting with himself over whether or not to panic.

She was scared. Elliot knew Olivia, Elliot thought for and with and beside Olivia and the way they worked, the way they fell into place together, Casey wanted to be stupid enough to believe that it was right.

"Olivia's a big girl," he wished he could believe himself, "I'm sure she's just fine."

Casey looked around the room quickly before closing in on Elliot, "look, Elliot, I don't know what the hell is going on here, but this isn't like her, and you know it. Something's up."

The tone of Casey's voice, the way the words rise and fall, the way they lack consistency, it gets Elliot moving.

"We could go check her place, I guess," he shrugs, but Casey can see that he's shaking, can see that he's worried, and in his mind are all the bottles. The half filled bottles he'd pulled from places unknown, the shattered bottles that cut into her as she collected their pieces. The blood she'd lost, the ground she'd lost, the life they'd lost.

"Elliot!" She ran after him, catching the doors as they came swinging back at her, running down the stairs behind him. "Elliot,"

"Don't talk." He needed her to come with him because he needed something to keep him from losing it, and when he looked back at her for an instant, tossing her the keys to the car and telling her to drive, she saw in his eyes an intensity, fierce and thick, and she imagined this to be what the victims saw, what he looked like when he was, for an instant, there with them, empathizing with them, feeling for them.

She had been to Olivia's a few times for a drink and some take out, and with a few directions from Elliot she found her way in a relatively short time, and as soon as the car got close enough to the curb Elliot was out and running.

His heart was pounding as he took the stairs two at a time, his blood pressure rising. His sympathetic nervous system was preparing him for a fight, getting him ready for what he was about to find, the neurons firing, his blood rushing to his heart.

And if only for a minute he felt like turning back, felt like he didn't want to find anything, that Olivia had gotten herself into this and she should get herself out, but, in every corner of his mind, there she was buried, and he knew, no matter what, he would always go find her.

It was his job.

Detective Stabler, after years of service, was about to experience his first real victim. His first real taste of fear.

"Elliot?" Casey found him standing in front of Olivia's door, the key in the lock, and he looked to Casey, remembering the events of last night, knowing that right now he was about to fall into the deepest bottom of another valley.

"It's not like her," his voice trembled, referencing her actions, and Casey nodded.

"If you want me to call someone," the clicking of the lock stopped her thoughts, and Elliot crossed over the threshold, into the uncertainty.

"Liv? Olivia?" He found his voice, calling out through the apartment, and when he saw the counter, two empty bottles of vodka, his voice became more urgent, but he didn't move. He screamed her name, but he didn't make any effort to move.

"Elliot!" Casey screamed from the down the hall, and without realizing it, Elliot was sprinting down the hall, but in his haze, he felt like he was crawling, taking baby steps until he found her at the end, in the doorway of the bathroom, Olivia on the floor behind her.

"Oh, oh…Jesus, oh, fuck," his voice was cracking and he couldn't make out her figure, her form, her, through the tears that started. "Liv," he didn't scream, the name fell like a prayer from his lips, riding on a soft breath, and he fell to the floor beside her, pressing his fingers to her neck, bending down by her nose to see if he could feel her breath.

_ i "Breath on Me" /i _he remembers telling her the other nite, but tonite the words are more of a prayer than anything else.

"C'mon sweetheart," his hands are running over her face, running through her hair, his tears, his trails of life, they are rolling from him and onto her, one lands on her cheek and he wipes it away. "Jesus Christ, Olivia, what did you do?"

Guilt, what's rising in him, the nausea, the panic, the fear. Guilt, he let her go last nite in pieces and he pushed her here and for all of this, he didn't care why this had started by he knew that he had to end it.

"Elliot, the ambulance is on its way." Casey is standing in the hallway, but Elliot doesn't notice, doesn't care.

"Olivia, hey, stay with me, Olivia, stay with me." It is a second, one sixtieth of a minute, a fraction of time, an insignificant piece of life on the scale of things, but in this second he sees her, the first day they met, she is young and green and she has a dream to save someone. A single life, that's all she wants changed.

And now, with death and life on her, this is what she has become. This is who she is.

A single second, another one, and he thinks about stupid questions on the ride to crime scenes, the way she wouldn't let him fall too deep into anything.

He was so far down now, he couldn't claw his way back out. He couldn't see the top.

Another second, and she is heaving. He is swatting the tears away from his face because he needs to see her. Her body is curling up, she is gasping for air.

Another second and he grabs her, takes her life into his arms and he picks her up, holds her lifeless body over the toilet as she vomits, heaves the bile and blood and he wishes that he could be stronger for her, that he could do this for her.

When he was six years old he was going to be a cowboy and he was going to save everyone. Unlike Olivia in the beginning, he wanted to save the world, but now, holding her, pushing her to him, trying to feel the air, the breath, the life, in her, he wants just this life.

For all of this, he just wants her to breath.

"Okay, Okay sweetheart, I'm here," there is rage under his fear, rage that she went back to this, that her promises to him were made to be broken, but right now, he can't think about that.

"Elliot, do you want me –"

"No! No, she just needs, she needs," he can't finish his own sentence, and he is taking deep breaths, frantically reaching for air to fill his lungs, he is choking on his tears, they fall to his tongue like fire. "God Damn it, Olivia! What were you thinking!" He screams to her lifeless form, her shallow breaths, her only proof of life. "Where the hell is the ambulance?" He turns to Casey and sees the paramedics standing next to her with a gurney, and they come in and take her from him, pushing him aside and taking her vitals.

One is giving her oxygen, the other is asking about what she drank, and Elliot falls back against the wall, thankful that Casey is explaining everything to them, and in the next second they are gone.

"They're going to Mt. Sinai," Casey steps towards him, but he moves so that she cannot touch him. He is sensitive to everything at the moment, and he knows it will hurt. "Are you okay?"

He is grasping for air. He is embarrassed. He is out of control. His eyes are red, burning, his cheeks are stiff, painted with patterns of tears.

"How long?" She is uncomfortable, slightly, because this is going places she's yet to be, and yet, as Elliot slides down the wall, his legs coming up towards him, his head falling to the solace of his hands, she knows that this isn't about her comfort.

"I can't do it."

Defeat. He didn't like conceding power or control to anyone, and he took the next second to think that maybe he pushed her to this by thinking that he could save her.

Ever since he met her, he saw the pieces of confusion in her eyes, and all he'd ever wanted to do was save her.

"Elliot, c'mon, let's get to the hospital," Casey urges him, but he doesn't respond.

For all the moments he punched the walls until his knuckles bled, for all the moments he lifted weights until his arms were useless, for all the moments he yelled and ran, he let himself actually break down, and he started heaving, Casey watched his back rise and fall and if he was aware that she was watching him, he may have been bothered, but he wasn't even here anymore.

He was lost in the ashes that his life had burnt to become, but he felt like he was still on fire, still burning.

When Casey tentatively touches him, he feels his children, feels their hands and their hearts and he misses them, and feels Olivia, he feels himself pushing her away, he sees her body, asking in it's lifelessness for help, and he feels as if they are all drowning, they are all going under, and he can only save one.

He can't do this.

He raises his head, the pictures around him, they are blurry and swirled in the dust and sparkles of the different streams of light, and he moves to the sink, the cabinet overtop, and growling he rips the door from it's hinges, throwing it across the room to shatter as it hits the wall of the shower.

"Jesus, Elliot," Casey jumps back, caught off guard as Elliot rips at the tie around his neck, rips the top few buttons of his shirt open, and as he heads out of the bathroom he says quietly, whispers to no one besides himself,

"She's not allowed to do this to me."

&&&&&&

"Is there someone you should call?" Casey offers Elliot a cup of coffee, watery and brown, in a tiny paper cup with pictures of playing cards as decoration.

"I'm her next of kin." He wonders when he will stop shaking.

Casey responds with silence, she has never seen someone fall apart as she has seen Elliot in the past hour. She never knew, until she saw it in his eyes, that that range of emotion was even possible. She had assumed that it was something a director would push an actor to do to win an Oscar – but she didn't believe that, unscripted, someone could experience that.

"Maybe I should go," it was awkward, they both knew, but Elliot needed something to keep him from exploding in the middle of the waiting room.

"If you have to," he didn't get to finish his statement before a doctor approached him, young with blonde hair, green eyes, and he looked to Elliot with question.

"Are you here with Olivia Benson?"

"How is she?" Elliot forced himself to stand.

"I'm Dr. Owens," he takes a minute to introduce himself, "she's going to be fine. Her blood alcohol content was .28," he stopped to let it sink in, and Elliot closed his eyes for a minute, not wanting to think of what she had done. "But, we're giving her some fluids, she was pretty badly dehydrated. We're monitoring her breathing, her airway is fine, she's vomited a few times, but there doesn't appear to be any more blood."

"Uh, thanks. Thank you," Elliot extends his hand and shakes the doctor's in a quick, fast motion.

"Would you like to see her?"

He has to think for a minute, because he doesn't know what he's about to see.

"Yes." He chokes the three letters out and follows the doctor down the hall, leaving Casey behind.

"She's conscious, everything's going to be fine, but she's still a little out of it." He shows Elliot into her room. "We'll be in periodically to check on her, she'll need to stay for a few hours so that we can observe her." His voice is fading as Elliot walks into her room, his jaw locked, and he pushes his hands into his pockets.

Olivia is laying, white against the sheets, her eyes closed, IV's running into her veins, a little heart monitor clipped to her finger.

He wants to talk to her, but he can't. He has nothing to say to her, no words to help her or comfort her or make this all okay.

He looks around the room, a chill running over his spine, and he remembers his fear of hospitals, his fear of all that comes in and never comes out, and he is instantly overcome with the need to touch her.

Slowly his feet are moving, carrying him over to her bed, and he looks like a child, scared with wide eyes, investigating a stranger, as he hesitantly sits down on the bed next to her.

His hands are on his lap now, clenched together, and he swallows his emotion hard, and this is how he sits, for two hours, afraid to touch her, until her eyes flutter open with what he knows of her eyes shown behind the curtain of their lids.

There is silence as she realizes now, the medicines and liquids pulling her out of her haze, she sees where she is, and who is with her.

For a minute, she wants to ask if she still has a heartbeat, because when the last thing in her life walked out on her, she could have sworn it had stopped, but now he is back again, sitting up against her, looking like a scared child, and in his eyes, she can feel the blue of home.

"El," her throat is dry, horse, and he looks away for a minute before getting up off of the bed.

"I was stupid to think that I could do anything for you," his words ride on waves of defeat. There is no anger, but destruction.

"Elliot." Her voice breaks with the rest of her.

"I missed time with my children, I have lost things, too, Olivia. I go into work, I sacrifice,"

"Being with me." She finishes for him, and the words, the reality of them that she speaks out loud, they catch him off guard.

He had never considered her being a sacrifice.

"You say you want help, and then…" He throws his hands in the air, and she can see that he is desperate, because she is too.

For the first time, when he looks at her, he doesn't see her. He saw her mother once, maybe twice, but he imagined that this is what she looked like.

"I don't know how to do it. My mother never taught me that." He wants to tell her to stop with the excuses, but he is trying to make himself realize that this disease is larger, bigger, grander, than they will ever be.

"I can't," he starts, but his breath hitches in his throat, and he starts pacing in short, tiny paths back and forth.

She can see what this is doing to him, she can see that this is not hers, and in all his pain, she wants to tell him that she loves him for loving her enough to take this on with her with everything that he already has.

"I can't keep doing this," she lets out a cry, and it stops Elliot in his tracks, stops him from moving, stops him from breathing, stops his heart from beating, stops him from living.

_ i When you love someone, you'll do anything /i _

"Elliot I can't – I can't be…" she trails off because she sees herself, 7 years old, sitting in the corner of a hospital room, her mother in the same bed in which she now lies.

"You need to go to AA, maybe see someone, you need –" he turns to see her staring, the tears, they are falling without effort, as if it is their place, and he breaks for her.

"Jesus Christ, Olivia, you scared the shit out of me," he walks over next to her, and Olivia wants to tell him that she knows, because she's been there. He looks her over, checking for cracks and seams and she knows this, but she doesn't care, because he is the first person to ever take the time to look.

_ i You risk it all, no matter what may come, when you love someone /i _

His fingers go to her, he presses the tips of his fingers to her cheeks, runs them over her forehead, her eyes, and then they go down her neck, her arms, down to her hands.

"Elliot,"

"Yeah, I'm gonna sit with you." He finishes her thought for her, and he sits himself on the bed next to her, beside her, as her equal, her partner, her best friend.

He takes her hand and runs his finger along hers, runs it over her palm, over the back of her hand, making tiny patterns on her wrist.

"Do you want me to stay, Olivia?" He whispers, because anything more would hurt.

Her hands go for him again, they reach for him, and she grabs him, weak and on the brink of falling into yesterday and pulling herself back into tomorrow, and at the end of her rope, she holds onto him to pull her up.

"Okay," he clears the tears from his throat, and she presses her head to his chest, to hear his heart beating.

"Tell me a story." Where she is laying is warm, and Elliot's head falls back against the bed.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jill fell and rolled all the way down, and Jack threw himself down after.

"What kind of story?" One of his arms falls around her, and the other takes her hand.

"I don't want to be here, El, just… a story. Any story." Her voice breaks with each word, and when he pulls her into his arms, he whispers to her, soft and gentle, each word laced with fear& he tells to her a fairytale.

&&&&&&

tbc.


	6. five

**For All of This;**

_Five._

"I think I've seen this in a lifetime movie," she runs her hands over her face, back through her hair.

His eyes, they're watching her through the window of the building, dark painted plastic, he is lit by the florescent lights behind him, and his stare, it is ominous.

The plastic Jesus is levitating, looking at her, judging her, and she feels like she's strangling.

"Two people sitting in a car outside of a church?" He gives her a questioning look, and takes the keys out of the ignition, the lights fading to black, and he turns slowly, his eyes meeting hers.

"You gonna go get coffee and then come back?" She wants to think that he's doing this because he wants to, not because he's watching her, making sure she actually follows through with it.

"Actually, there's a meeting I want to go to down the hall," he pushes his door open and gets out, but Olivia doesn't move. Outside, in the dark of the night, the sky is opening, letting out a soft rain, the clouds covering the moon, the stars, any remnants of light, and Elliot walks over to Olivia's door, throws it open, and then extends to her his hand.

Hold on.

"I don't know if I can do this, I mean, these people-"

"It's Anonymous, Liv. They're not going to put your picture on one of those billboards around the city," he paused for a moment as she took his hand and got out of the car, closing the door behind her, "I think they at least have to ask you before they do that."

"Ha ha," she rolls her eyes, not letting her hand slip from inside of his. "You're not coming in, are you?" He can't tell if he wants her to or not, if she's asking him to stay or telling him to go, and instinctively, he squeezes her hand tighter.

"There's a meeting I want to go to," he gives her a smile, and she immediately thinks that it's something to do with divorce, single parents, and it is her turn to squeeze his hand now, telling him to stay. She wanted him to be better, but, she didn't want him to be back to normal without her.

"Yeah?" Her voice is shaky, and they stop outside of the church entrance, Jesus, his eyes are still on them, his hands are out, he is glowing, and Olivia feels as if she should repent.

"Yeah, Sexaholics Anonymous," for a moment her anxieties break, and she let's out a loud, deep laugh.

"Elliot," she is laughing through his name, and he smiles for her.

"What? It's been a while, okay? I figure someone in that group has to slip, someone has to fall off the wagon."

"El," her laughter has turned nervous, and he hears the slight change.

"I'm just lending a public service, I'll be there to help if someone needs it." She knows that his words have more than one meaning, and with her eyes, she thanks him for it.

"I never got why they hold those meetings in a church." She is avoiding going inside now, and Elliot knows it, but still, he humors her to give her the time that she needs.

"Catholic guilt," he starts as a few people walk in the door a few feet behind them. "When I was 12 my teacher, Sister Anne, she told us that whenever we thought of having intercourse, we should imagine Jesus. Picture his face on the face of the girl, and, if we thought that that was appealing, then we should think of her." Without thinking, he reaches and moves her hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. Her skin is damp from the light drizzle, and his fingers play against heaven's tears for a moment, resting on her cheeks. "She was 70. Her skin was rinkled. Her eyes, they were brown, and her hair – I think she was balding."

"Oh God, Elliot," she laughs, but she is curious, "did it work?"

"You better believe it. Didn't have sex 'til I was 14." A few more people sneak in the door behind them, and Olivia smiles, laughs gently, and then looks to him for a long minute.

"Um, I guess," she gestures over her back to the door, and Elliot nods.

"I'll try to be finished with the sex feigns by the time you're done."

"That's nice of you." She lets her hand fall from his, and turns on her heels, heading towards the door, and he watches her leaving, she looks defeated from the back, basking in the church's unearthly lighting, she looks already gone.

"Hey, Gidget," she hears his voice behind her, a few people are approaching, two older men, and she stops for a minute before walking through the door.

"What?" He is running over to her quickly, a smile drawn deeply across his face.

"The whole alcoholics anonymous thing, I'm trying to be anonymous. You better start calling me Spartacus, just incase." She wants to tell him that she doesn't know how to thank him, but she knows that he already understands. "I'll be here when you're done, he gives her a nod and a smile, and then watches as she walks inside, disappearing as the door closes behind her, and after a minute's hesitation he heads off to the main door of the church and heads into the little chapel, down the hall from the meeting rooms.

It's been a long time since he's prayed, and he feels as if tonite he needs it.

&&&&&&

"It's just these people, and, they've lost so much. They're there because they have to be, because there's nowhere else to go," Olivia is explaining as Elliot is taking the little white containers of Chinese food from the bag. He is making her stay with him, and she knows that it is not just for her, but he needs this too.

She sees Elliot as being what makes her one step away from everyone else. The one thing that has kept her above rock bottom.

"Yeah?" He hands her her sweet & sour chicken and white rice before taking his general tsao chicken and following behind her to the kitchen table.

"And the worst part, Elliot, is that I'm one of them. I'm not there undercover, I'm not following anyone – this is for me."

"Everyone's different, Liv," he hands her a fortune cookie.

He feels like he needs to reinforce that she is not just another one of millions.

He needs to remember that she is not another percent or statistic, another slash of failure.

"You will have a prosperous life," she reads her fortune cookie out loud.

"In bed," Elliot says, raising his eyebrows, and Olivia's eyes widen. "It's this thing Dickie does, after the fortune, whatever it is, you add 'in bed'. So, Benson, you will have a very prosperous life, in bed."

"You tell Dickie about the Jesus thing?" Olivia raises an eyebrow, and in the middle of this conversation, a few lines in a few lines away from being out, she can fall in and pretend that there is nothing else. That everything is how it used to be.

"You kidding me?" Elliot laughs, cracking his fortune cookie open, "moss grows on both sides of a rock."

"In bed," Olivia adds.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"You'll be sleeping with fungus?" She offers and explanation, and Elliot pops a piece of his chicken into his mouth.

"Jealous?" He teases, and she shakes her head as she laughs, eating a few pieces of chicken and a little bit of rice before she admits that it's enough.

"I'm going to go get a shower." She takes her food to the refrigerator and sets it inside, looking back to Elliot for a minute, her throat burning as she feels the words rising, playing on her tongue, and she wants to tell him that she loves him, that she is thankful that he is here for her when he doesn't even know where he himself is.

She wants to tell him that she doesn't care if he is lost, too, because at least they are together.

"A friend asks for only your time and not your money," Elliot reads the fortune of the third cookie, calling down the hall to Olivia.

"In bed," she screams back as a headache takes residence over her brow. "Keep your friends and prostitutes separate, El, I think that that's valuable advice," she grabs her robe from the bed as she hears him yell from the kitchen and then she heads into the bathroom.

Pulling back the curtain she sees that on the bath there are orange candles scattered around the edge, and curiously, her head pounding, her hands beginning to shake, she picks one up.

It smells like oranges.

He is standing in the kitchen, putting the food away, cleaning up, when she walks out, holding the candle in her hand, and she gives him a soft look.

"I figured it would keep you from ruining all my oranges just so you could smell the rind," his explanation is simple, and her voice breaks as she thanks him.

&&&&&

She opens the drawer by the refrigerator, trying to find the Tylenol, but instead, a folded mass of papers are there instead, and how they are folded, she can see the heading, a nice letter head from a law office.

It says, in more words than necessary, that Elliot's marriage, his life for over 20 years, it says that it's over.

"You find the Tylenol?" He has just gotten out of the shower, and he slips his t&shirt on over his damp hair.

"El," she holds the papers up to him, and he has to tell himself not to yell at her. He ignores her instead, moving past her to the cabinet and taking out a bottle of Tylenol.

"Take this before your headache gets worse," he opens the bottle, shakes two pills into his hand, and then hands them to her before walking out of the kitchen and into the living room, falling back onto the couch.

"Elliot, why didn't you tell me?" She stands in front of him, the back of her knees up against the coffee table, "talk to me, El," she sits on the coffee table across from him, and reaches for his knee.

And he says, "when would I have told you, Olivia? At which point, exactly, would it have been best to let you know?"

He doesn't want her to see him as a failure. He doesn't want her to think any less of him for this.

"I'm sorry, I know this isn't what you need&"

"Don't do this, Olivia, come on,"

"What happened, Elliot?" She doesn't let it rest, her eyes, they're getting blurry, her headache is moving down the back of her neck, up through her temples, and she has to move from the coffee table to the couch, leaning back against the cushions.

"You doing okay?"

"No, I need a fucking drink." She presses her fingers to her temples, and Elliot wonders how pathetic the two of them look.

"She left, to give us space, to test me, to see what I would do," he clears his throat, and Olivia feels helpful for the first time in weeks, months, for all the times she wished he would talk to her, here she has it. "And I didn't go back," he knows that if she could see him, she would see his failure.

Instead, though, she closes her eyes to feel his words through the piercing pains in her head, and all she can realize is that he is stronger than she ever thought.

"Things fall apart, people grow apart, and I love her, so much," he lets out a deep breath, his pride, and continues. Elliot, shaking, he says, "and the kids, I miss them so much, but Olivia, I couldn't go back there so that we could lie to each other for another 20 years. Lie next to each other and keep this going because we thought we had to. I knew what she wanted, and I knew she was waiting for me to make the final choice."

"You miss her, though," Olivia whispers.

"Everyday," Elliot admits.

"Good," her voice is shallow.

"Sadistic much?" Elliot laughs gently, and he knows that Olivia is the only one who, at this moment, could make him do so.

It is his turn now, his body burning, his heart pounding, racing, it is his turn to want to let her know how much he loves her for doing nothing more than breathing with him.

"No, just, you loved her, and…" she trails off, not able to put her thoughts into words around the pounding of her head.

"Yeah, yeah. C'mon, Liv, you should try to get some sleep," Elliot tells her, getting up and then leaning down, taking both of her hands in his and helping her up off of the couch and down the hall to the spare bedroom.

He helps her into bed and then pulls the quilt and sheets up around her.

"Try to sleep it off."

"You gonna stand watch outside the door?" She rolls onto her back and gives him a knowing smile.

"I'm gonna try not to," his voice is horse, there is something in it that she has never heard, the mixture, maybe regret, sadness, hope, it's one she's never heard in Elliot.

And he is gone 15 minutes before she rolls over to see him standing in the doorway, his arms cross across his chest, and he is looking away from her, looking at the far wall, decorated with a picture of his children.

"Elliot?" His eyes look red from where she is, but she understands that it might be the pounding in her head throwing everything off.

"I miss you, or, I mean& I missed you, too." He references her comment about Kathy, and Olivia pushes herself up in bed, but immediately slides back down. "You okay, Liv?" His voice is genuine, scared, and for the first time in a long time she knows that he needs her.

"Can you sleep in here tonite?" She needs to be close to him.

"Yeah, uh, yeah, sure," he clears his throat and then walks over to the bed, hesitantly, before getting in next to her, and she moves up against him, burrows into him.

"Hey, El?" He drapes an arm around her. Her hair, it smells like flowers, and her skin, it feels like silk.

"Yeah Liv?"

"Does this mean I'm the fungus?"

"Huh?" It takes him a minute for it to register.

"Your fortune, according to it and Dickie, you'd be sharing a bed with some fungus." She teases him, and they fall asleep to a gentle laugh.

&&&&&&

"Olivia?" He rubs his eyes with the back of his hand, swallowing a yawn as he walks into the living room to find Olivia sitting on the couch, crying to something she's watching on TV.

"Elliot, sorry," she reaches for the remote and mutes the TV, "did I wake you up?"

He doesn't tell her that when he went to put his arms around her she wasn't there, and so, in a way, she did.

"Nah," he falls down on the couch beside her. "You okay?" He places his hand on the top of her head, palm down, and brushes her forehead with his thumb.

"I need something to drink," she is shaking, her legs, they are crossed underneath of her, and they are moving quickly up and down.

"Not now, come on," he lets his arm fall around her, now around her shoulders, and then he moves her so that she is sitting sideways, and he pulls her legs over his lap, running his over hand over her knees to try to calm her down.

"No, Elliot, what am I doing this for? It's not like I have anything to do this for – I don't have a family, I don't have kids, a husband, I don't even have a casual date."

Elliot remembers all of Olivia's questions, in passing, her comments, about children – about what her own children could be, and as he wipes the tears from her cheeks, her teeth chattering, he knows that this is every reason why she never did it.

He can also see that it makes it worse. That it makes this worse, makes it hurt more, makes it drive home everything she doesn't have.

"You're my family," he keeps rubbing her legs, trying to calm her body.

"You're just saying that because you want me to not quit this,"

"Hey now, Gidget, that's not true." He tries to cheer her up, but Elliot can see that she is not about to accept it.

"Elliot." His name fades, falling through her lips.

"You're doing this because you know you're better than her. You're doing this because you know you're better than him. Because for the first time in your life you have the opportunity to not be your mother's daughter or your father's child – because you can get yourself back, Olivia, back from the both of them."

Olivia is heaving, her chest rising and falling, her body needing the oxygen.

"She gives him up," she is watching the TV, and Elliot looks as a baby is lying in a crib.

"What? What is this?" Olivia swats the tears away from her face and then reaches for Elliot's hand, and without another thought, he links his fingers through hers.

"She gives him up because the aliens are threatening him. He'll never be safe."

"Aliens?"

"When did I become my mother?" Olivia jumps back to the previous conversation, and Elliot stops trying to understand.

"You know how many people you saved? How many kids –"

"But what does that matter if I can't even help myself?" She shoots back at him, and he is rubbing his thumb over her hand.

"Maybe it's time you let someone help you," he clears his throat, and Olivia nods knowingly.

"I'm a mess, Stabler, you'd be better just getting me out of here." She moves down so that she can lie on the couch, and she lets her head fall to the cushions before Elliot hands her a pillow.

"Olivia," he is still holding her hand, "this is what you do when you love someone." The words are casual, but Olivia felt like in that one sentence, the world as realigned itself, back in the range of the sun, and as Elliot slides down on the couch next to her, she can feel the warmth.

"X&Files," she says, his arm is pulling her into him, "that's what it is."

"Ah, okay." He runs his hands back through her hair. "Hey, we should be a TV show, that'd be pretty cool," he teases, and Olivia laughs gently, her tears bouncing from her cheeks as they jump. "What, you were the one who said we were a lifetime movie. I mean, I guess being at least a lifetime movie would be okay, I could be the strong, gorgeous cop," he pauses for a minute, Olivia smiling, "and maybe I could ride a horse. That'd be pretty cool."

"Hey El?" This is right, this moment, two broken pieces, they are forced back together again.

Jack and Jill fell down the hill – and then climbed all the way back up.

"What? No horse? Okay, fine, then at least I get to have a motorcycle. Or, I could be a bike cop, show off my legs in those little shorts," he winks at her, and she tells him, without ever saying the words, thank you, for saving her, for pulling her back up when no one else could.

And as they laugh, falling back into each other, Olivia whispers into his neck, "no, El, I was just going to say that I think we'd be better suited for Dr. Phil."

&&&&&&

tbc.


	7. six

Author's note; Thanks to everyone who's read/commented/emailed, all that, there will be one more chapter after this one, it probably won't be finished until later next week, just to let ya'll know. Hope you've enjoyed this so far and will see it out to the end, I appreciate everything! Enjoy, Breigh.

**For All of This;**

_Six._

"Gidget," the car slows to a stop beside her, and she pauses for a minute, collecting her breath as the sea of other anonymous victims come from the deep glow of the church.

Elliot leans over the passenger seat and opens the door, pushing it a little so that Olivia can grab it, and then he leans back into his seat.

"How was it?" He tries, but knows that it is no use, knows that the only thing she says about the meetings are laced in such ambiguity that he would never understand.

Tonite, though, there is silence as he heads out of the parking lot towards his blank slate of an apartment where they continue to hide.

"You hungry? Want to get coffee?" In her silence he feels her thoughts, concrete, heavy, hungry for something that she cannot find, eager for something she does not know.

Seven days, 14 hours, 27 minutes. It had been that short of a time since her last drink, and she can still taste the Absolut Vanilla, still feel the sting of the whiskey, hear the beer empty from the bottle.

She slept a few hours, discovered early morning TV, nick at nite, all those cable shows, and when her eyes would flutter closed she would be seven years old again, looking at her mother, wondering why she was really doing this.

Tonite she didn't know what she had to prove.

She listened to the other 13 people in the group and she wondered if anyone really believed that they were getting better, of if they just liked hearing themselves talk.

Everyone wanted to be their own hero, but in doing that she realized that everyone else had lost everyone else that they cared about. That cared about them.

She looked at Elliot.

She said, her eyes wells, filled to the top with salty water, "can we just drive? Just keep driving?"

"Hey, Liv, everything okay?" She wanted to tell him that she didn't remember the last time everything was okay. Stopped at a stoplight he looked over to her, inspecting her face, feeling himself drowning in the tears in her eyes.

He wished she would smile.

Jack and Jill fell down the hill, and from the dark depth of another valley he laced his fingers within hers and brought her hand to his lips.

"You want to talk to me?" He doesn't understand how you can miss someone when they're sitting next to you, when you can feel the life in their skin, pressed tight against yours.

She leans over and places her head on his shoulder. Tonite she is sure that everyone is just one step away from everyone else. That the stockbroker who's left wife him, the woman who's daughters were taken away from her, the teenager who dropped out of college, they are one step away from her, they are one step away from her mother, she is one step away from Elliot, from them both disintegrating into oblivion.

She closes the eyes that she got from her father as she realizes that today is one of those days when you shouldn't have ever gotten out of bed.

"Where should I head to?" He asks her slowly, and Olivia wants to tell him that she has no clue where she's going, where she's been, where she's at.

Tonite his shoulder is tense, tight, and she can feel that he is scared, that he's nervous that this might be the time he can't get her out of it, the one time she stays behind.

Her headache, she doesn't remember the last time it wasn't there, doesn't remember the last time she didn't see the world through it's haze. She pushes herself up off of Elliot, takes her hand from his, and his hand falls to her thigh instead.

Her fingers press the little button to open the window, and the air comes in, cold, harsh, unrelenting. It burns her skin, pulls out the red, dries the tears she allowed to fall.

"Fuck!" She screams the four letters out the window, into the night sky, allowing them to dismember and scatter throughout the other particles.

"Olivia," his heart is pounding in his ears as he pulls the car over into the parking lot of a pet food store that is closed, it's doors locked, a little sign glowing above.

She throws the door open and jumps out, slams the door shut, walks away from the car, her fingers running back through her hair as she lets the emotion fall in salty drops, rivers running down her cheeks, her skin stinging from the cold air.

"Hey, Olivia, Liv," he gets out quickly and runs after her, grabbing her arm, stopping her from going any further.

"Let me go!" She struggles under his grip, pushing him away, her breathing gets heavy, quick, frantic.

"Olivia, calm down! Jesus Christ, Olivia!" He doesn't want to think that a few hours ago her tears were hidden beneath her smile.

"I can't go back there, I can't," she stopped trying to pull away, her body, the fight going out of her, it fell limp beneath his touch, and he brought her to him, slid his arms under hers and pulled her in for a hug, her head falling onto his shoulder for a brief moment before he pulled back and looked to her softly.

"Sweetheart, talk to me." This time he begged, and Olivia pulled her way out of his arms, walked back to the car, pushed herself up onto the hood, and Elliot, like always, followed behind, crawling up behind her, sitting next to her.

"They said sobriety didn't mean recovery. They said to find something else to define yourself by. It's not about your last drink, it's about being a mother, a daughter, a sister. I'm supposed to not let myself count the hours, I'm supposed to be something else—"

"That sounds right," he agreed, reaching his hand over, placing it on the back of her head.

"I'm none of those things," her voice is small, scared, and this, laying with Elliot on the top of his car, this feels like confession.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. She bows her head, catches her tears on her tongue.

"I could never take another drink, never, but for what? Will it even matter? I have my father's eyes, my mother, hers were small, hazel, but mine, they're from a person I've never met," she pauses for a moment, "you ever look in the mirror and just see the pieces that you're made of? The parts of you?"

"Your eyes are yours," his words do not falter as he lies back against the windshield, and Olivia curls up next to him, looking up at the blanket of stars that covers them.

"When I was 13 my mother told me that if she knew about me sooner, I would never have been there. She threw a bottle at my feet, and while I picked up the pieces she told me that she found out too late." Her voice cracks, breaks, falls unsteady upon Elliot like a weight of a thousand pounds. "I always knew that I wasn't welcome."

He does not have words for her, because he can feel her hurt, and words seem pathetic, hopeless, a sorry excuse for everything in her at this moment.

"But sometimes, sometimes she would read to me before I fell asleep. Sometimes she would make me chocolate peanut butter cookies and pick me up from school."

He notices, Olivia curled up against him, that they fit together like the tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, large and intricate, and even when whole you can see where they slide into each other, where they are infused together.

It has been 30 years since my last confession.

"I think, sometimes, that she did love me, but in the end, I didn't make her feel like the alcohol did. I couldn't love her like that. I couldn't push her into the feeling it gave her," she admits into his shirt, and Elliot pulls her closer to him, the car cool beneath them, the air crisp as it surrounds them.

"And now? Do you know what that feels like?" He was scared, feeling like maybe she was appoligizing because he couldn't do this for her, because he wasn't stronger than the whiskey.

"I feel like I always saw my father's eyes, my mother's mouth, her nose, every time that I looked in the mirror. I saw pieces of failure in my face, pieces of everything that I could become – fear. Maybe I can't define myself by anything else. Maybe this is who I am, maybe I drink until I'm dead because…" she trails off, not wanting to say that she technically already is, that her heart beat and brain function are a mere technicality.

But Elliot, without saying anything, he pulls her closer, he runs his thumb along her check, and she wants to tell him that she loves him because she does not know any other word that can convey what he means to her.

"You ever wonder who painted the sky?" His words fall upon her life a fairytale, and she moves closer to him still, her warm breath falling upon his neck.

"El,"

"The big dipper, the little dipper, Orion's belt, that thing over there that looks like a cat," he rambles.

"Elliot, I think that's an airplane." Elliot gets up from his position, walks around the car to Olivia, takes her legs, moves them so they're hanging off the car.

"You looking for a reason, Olivia, something to define yourself by?" He challenges, leaning over and kissing her forehead, and she says nothing, her emotion blocking the words. "You're a good cop, you have saved more people than you will ever know, you have helped more people than anyone could ever hope to," his voice breaks for a minute, his head falls. His hands go to either side of her on the car, he leans in, smiles slowly. "And at 3am, when Murphy Brown wakes me up, when I come home and find all these naked, unpeeled oranges in my fridge next to your little bottle of munchkin pickles, it's like I know why I'm still able to keep going, why I'm able to get through Kathy and the kids and all of that. Olivia Benson, you and me, we are so screwed up, that we're approaching normal, but I don't know where I'd be without you, so…" he's thought about the words for a while, but tonite, Olivia fading into the universe, he feels that she needs to know them.

"You don't need to make me better," she is scared that they are in foreign territory, that they have gone from needing each other to being completely dependent.

"No, you're right," he moves back, running his hand over his face, and to the stars in her eyes he says, "I have to."

&&&&&

"What's going on in this one?" He stretches the sleep out of his eyes as he falls into the spot beside her on the couch, and she gives him some of her blanket before crawling up against him.

"Murphy's trying to get Avery into Lucky Ducky," Olivia explains.

"Lucky Ducky?"

"A nursery school, she didn't realize how crazy it was," she smiles as she inhales his the smell of his body wash.

The pair sit in silence for a while until Murphy Brown breaks for commercial, and Elliot whispers to Olivia, his words lingering in the dark, he says, "they were probably afraid to love you." Olivia grabs at Elliot's shirt, knowing that she cannot let him go. He continues, "your mom, everyone else, you say you have your father's eyes, Liv, but I don't think so. I don't think another person in the world has those eyes. You promise everything with them."

Her eyes were a promise.

"Elliot," she starts, but he stops her.

"I can't think of all that stuff that happened to you, Olivia. I can't think that I wanted to have been there to stop it. That I couldn't have been there," he refers to her childhood, and Olivia realizes that in this moment, this is the first time that anyone has ever hurt for her. "I just," he starts, talking into the top of her head where his lips linger, "I want to take care of you, make this better. And I know that I can't, but still, I don't want you to think that you're not worth this."

"I didn't mean – it's not – just sometimes I get into pity modes for everything I was too scared to do, ya know?"

And with her in his arms, he does.

I love you, he tells her in his head, through his heart, but he doesn't dare let her know. This isn't about that.

"Like what?"

"Like live on the water, sail around the world, see what my son or daughter would look like," she says the last part fast and each phrase at a lower volume than the one preceeding it.

"You think about that a lot?" His hands are rubbing her arms.

"Nah," her voice is stronger, louder, "just a few times a day, but nothing much." She laughs, and Elliot wonders if the little girl he sees in her eyes would have his eyes or hers.

"You could still do it, you know."

"Oh yeah, because I'm exactly what a kid needs. Instead of putting away money for college I might as well just put it away for therapy."

"Hey, that's not fair. You're great with kids," he encourages her, wondering if the little girl would have her mother's smile or his coloring.

"I am. Everyone else's, and seriously, Elliot, no. It's not happening. It's just one of those things," she shrugs, and he knows that the conversation is over as he catches her eyes with his, seeing in them a dream interrupted by this nightmare.

"Hey, you know what?" He clears his throat and stretches his back as Olivia moves out from under his arms.

"Hm?"

"I think that we would make for a really great country song. We should sell our story to one of those guys with the cowboy hats in Nashville," he says seriously, and Olivia lets out a deep laugh, reminding Elliot that beneath each cloud lies a silver lining.

"Elliot!" She hits him playfully.

"No, really. I mean, sure, we don't have a pick up truck, and no, our dog didn't run away, but man, this story has to sell a few CD's."

She doesn't know where she would be without him, she notes, as she laughs along with him.

Sobriety does not mean recovery, she remembers, but she looks to Elliot and wonders if the people at AA would think the same thing if they counted their days without a drink as the same number of days she's been with Elliot.

This is what sobriety has given her. This is what each drink has taken away.

"Elliot," she wants to spend every minute with him, because in his eyes, she knows that there is something worth more than any drink, and that is something she was never given – someone who understands her, feels her, feels with her.

"Yeah kid?" On the counter there is a box that she knows will buy her at least another hour with him before he goes back to bed.

"You want to play clue?" He laughs, and she smiles hopefully.

"Fine, but only if I get to be Mrs. Plum."

"Okay. I like Colonel Mustard, anyway." She shrugs her shoulders as Elliot goes and gets the game.

And with his eyes locked on hers, his smile stretching to them, he says, "oh, and we play the stripping version."

"Excuse me?" She laughs as Elliot takes the game out of the box and sets it up on the table.

"Yeah, every time you guess wrong you lose a piece of clothing," he explains.

"Elliot!"

"What? You have no problem leaving my oranges naked."

"You're comparing me to your oranges? And is it really that big of a problem? You want me to tape the peels back on when I'm done?"

"Well, I don't want to make a wrong comparison of you to the oranges, so, maybe you could show me and I could make a more accurate one," she realizes the joke too late, and blushes. "And if you tape the mangled peels back on the oranges, so help me god."

"Elliot," she pulls the little plastic rope and wrench from the box and places them on the board, rolling her eyes.

For the first time in a while she forgets that she wants a drink. She forgets what it tastes like, forgets what it feels like.

And as they fight over who gets to pick the cards for the killer and weapon and room, Olivia takes a minute to remember what she had before this.

Nothing.

&&&&&&

When they finish the game in 43 minutes, when Elliot is still complaining that Olivia should be down to her bra and underwear, they head back to their respective bedrooms, fall into bed, and in 13 minutes they each are out in the hallway, each heading to the other's room.

"I was coming to see if you were okay," he smiles sheepishly, and Olivia nods slowly.

"I miss you," she admits, and Elliot let's out his breath, his lips parting in a deep smile.

13 minutes without him and she was already in withdraw.

"My bed or yours?" He winks at her, and Olivia wraps her arms around him and they walk together into his room, crawling into bed. Before Elliot falls back onto the pillow he tucks the sheets up around Olivia and leans over her, running his hand down her cheek.

"Everyday I see you one step closer to who you are, and one more step away from them," he places a kiss on her forehead, and Olivia nods slowly. "You know I've got you, though, no matter who you are." His voice is serious, concerned, and he needs Olivia to know this, needs her to believe this.

"Elliot, you don't need to do this," she starts, but he falls back onto his back, and she moves closer to him.

"Just tell me you know, okay? Tell me you believe me," he took her as his foundation for the new life he had been forced to build.

And in his arms, in his bed, in his life, in his eyes and under a blanket of stars she says, she doesn't know the boundaries of who she is anymore, but she knows that if he leaves now, if she leaves now, she will never find out. She says, her voice shaking, her eyes closed, she says that she needs him, for the first time in her life she falls into him, and she says, her arms around him, "Elliot, I think you're the last person left in the world who I believe."

&&&&&&

to be continued.


	8. seven

Author's note; I know I said there would only be one more part, but I ended up splitting it into two parts because it got too long, so, there is an epilogue that will follow after this. The lines in italics are from the song 'Keep Me in Your Thoughts' by Stephen Kellogg. Enjoy.

**For All of This;**

_seven._

He didn't like saying goodbye to her.

She drank the last of her coffee, placed the empty cup into the cup holder, and looked to him knowingly.

She didn't like saying goodbye to him.

_ i I know it's morning and that you have to go /i _

He knew now what Kathy must have felt when she said goodbye. They said their parting words while the sun fought to rise from its sleepless night, and they were laced with fear for what the hours that they were apart could bring.

_ i You look so lovely in the morning glow /i _

At least before he could have saved her.

At least before she could have been with him.

_ i The only thing I ask is that you know_

_That I will keep you in my thoughts throughout the day /i _

"Be careful," she cannot look at him and she wraps her coat tightly around herself.

This morning, masqueraded in the early hours of darkness, he saw the regret in her, and he says, "you don't have to keep doing this, you could talk to Cragen, you could-"

"Hey, El, just be careful." She doesn't want a discussion or to think about this before she has to go in.

"You want to get dinner tonite?" He asks after leaning over and kissing her forehead quickly, lingering close to her for an instant before pulling back, his eyes mirrored in hers.

"Um," she stumbles. It has been 7 weeks, and she feels as if they have eaten at every restaurant in the city or tasted every selection of delivery or take-out. "How about I cook?" She says as she gets out of the car.

There is a lot to talk about.

And as he watches her run inside before he heads towards the garage, he tries to remember when they became so domesticated. When he didn't think twice about them driving to work together, coming home together, sleeping in the same bed together.

Her coffee cup is white, but a mark of her lipstick, light red, sits painted on the lid, and he wonders when he started needing her as much as she needed him.

&&&&&

Four o'clock.

Her headache, normally under control, is pounding with full force, her fingers pressed deep into her temples.

She thinks he is talking to her, but she doesn't know.

She wishes she were home watching Oprah.

He makes her want to take a drink. Rum and Diet. Two ice cubes.

"You become your parents, that kid, he's going to turn into his father," he doesn't seem concerned, just like he's talking to fill the space between them.

He doesn't care because it isn't his father beating the shit out of his mother. It isn't his father leaving bruises on him without ever touching him. It isn't his father who never comes home without first taking a drink and second making sure he's wiped the smell of sex off of him.

His father gave him his money. His father fed him from a silver spoon. His father was a businessman who made a few good investments and he was doing this work because he wanted to "help".

Olivia could see that all he really wanted was people to flatter him, to be in awe of his gesture.

His wife was blonde and small and wore Chanel and his son had blue eyes and blonde hair and his name was something far too big for someone his age. Harrison or Clinton or something like that – something that let you know that he was better than you were ever going to be – and he was two.

"You don't always become your parents," she doesn't want to talk to him, to know that if it comes to it, this is who she has to give her life for.

She feels like he would never do the same for her. Because of Lanceton, or is it Addison? She doesn't care. His kid, he only likes to wear cashmere Ralph Lauren sweaters, he informed her one day after they left a house where a woman had beat the life and love and innocence out of her three year old and then left him in a wool sweater that he was allergic to, because it would make him learn.

"It's all these kids see, they don't know anything else. You know that whole nature nurture thing. It's like, these kids have the violence in them anyway, because their parents clearly do, and then, they're raised in the environment where it's all they see. It's all they know."

"Then what are we doing?" She doesn't like him, but he makes her wonder what she would be doing right now if her father had raised her. If she saw him, if he was the nurturer and not the alcoholic.

She tries to remember all the times Elliot tried to convince her that she was not two separate parts, one of her mother and one of her father, but this asshole, he is wearing a Rolex, he let's her know that she is everything he tells her she is not.

"What?" He leans forward, elbows resting on his desk, his eyes looking her over.

"If all of these kids are destined to be their parents, then what are we doing? We're not stopping anything, we're just putting in hold for a few hours, maybe years, but it's not really doing anything," she shrugs, wondering when everything became so hopeless.

She wonders what Elliot is doing.

"I'm just saying, science has proven-"

"Science has proven a lot of things. And disproven a lot of things. That cross around your neck, Mark – science has disproven that. Evolution, the big bang. Why the hell are you doing this if you think science has proven that all we're doing is stopping the inevitable for the time being?"

He isn't her partner; he's the thing she has to work with. He doesn't understand, and he doesn't care to. Being away from Elliot she comes to realize how unique he is. How unique they are.

Looking to Mark, blinking at him, trying to see him through the asshole in front of her, she wonders if he would ever take the time to understand her. She wonders if everything that she will ever do is in vain. She wonders if one life really is enough to make her stay – if saving the world will come one by one, if everything takes forever.

For all of this, she knows how much she needs him.

"Make it better for a kid for a day," he sits back. "Sometimes that's all you can do, Olivia. You can't save everyone. You can't save the world."

Elliot would have never told her that.

&&&&&&

"Gone already?" Fin sits down at the empty desk across from Elliot.

"He looked like her kid," he offers simply, sitting back, running his hands over his face.

"It's a tough unit," he doesn't know what else to say, doesn't know if brining up Olivia is okay yet.

It's easy to see that he can't do this without her. That he's crippled without her. It doesn't take a detective to see that, it takes a person, a friend.

"Yeah, I know. I don't blame her." He understands for all the times he saw his children in the victims.

"How's Olivia doin' in domestic?" He treads lightly, letting Elliot draw his own conclusions.

"If she doesn't want to be here, it's not going to be a help. She doesn't feel the same about it that she did," he says simply, and Fin gets the hint.

"Elliot!" Cragen is standing in the doorway of his office, and Elliot nods at Fin before getting up and heading towards his office.

"What's up, Captain?" He shuts the door behind him and falls into the seat in front of Cragen's desk.

"With Jill being gone, it's back to the desk for a few days until we can figure something out, find a replacement," he explains, but Elliot has heard it before, so he knows this is nothing more than a technicality.

Jill's eyes, they were green, anyway, and when he looked at her across the desk – they were thick with green envy and not a chocolate ocean.

"Yeah, yeah, I know." His head falls back, and he lets out a breath.

"You seen her lately?" Cragen is looking at his desk when Elliot looks to him.

He wonders if he is playing dumb, if he really doesn't know that he and Olivia, that she is the last thing he sees before he goes to bed, the first thing he sees when he wakes up.

Elliot, he doesn't know when living with Olivia, when fusing their lives together, became normal and the default.

"Yeah, I've seen her a lot," he nods, and Cragen sits back in his chair.

Cragen doesn't look like he knows that they've been playing house.

"Good," the word is genuine, and Elliot bites the inside of his cheek, looks to the far wall, wonders what she's doing. "Well, if you need anything –" he starts, but Elliot stops him.

"I'll let you know," he finishes for him and pushes himself up out of the chair, and when he opens the door to the office, he stops abruptly at what he sees.

"Hey, we wrapped up early, so I thought I'd just come by to see if you were done," Olivia spins around in her chair, looking at him, and he has to look away because he had forgotten how much he missed this until this moment.

He missed all of her.

"Oh, um, uh," he didn't have the words; this was the first time since she'd transferred that she was back in the department. At her desk, across from him. He would like to think that she could feel all she was missing.

"Where's your partner?" Olivia turned around to her empty desk, remembering how it was when she was there, where her pictures were, how her papers were scattered about.

Elliot felt how empty it was.

"Elliot," a woman said, almost on cue, and Olivia turned around quickly to see a brown haired woman with green envy eyes approaching.

Her stomach dropped.

"Jill, hi, is everything okay? You forget something?" Elliot takes a step towards her, and Olivia feels like she is intruding, like she is a visitor in this part of his life, and she hates it.

She wants a drink. Vodka and sprite. One ice cube.

"No, actually," she looks to Olivia before continuing, and Elliot backs up into Olivia's old desk, Jill's old desk, and he sits himself down on the corner.

He feels the opportunity closing, and wonders if Olivia feels it too.

"Oh, Jill, this is Olivia Benson, she used to be my partner here, transferred over to Domestic a few months ago," he explains, a sad excuse for an introduction, but Olivia can feel that it's all business.

"Nice to meet you," she leans forward and shakes Olivia's hand before adjusting the leather backpack she has slung over her shoulder.

Unconsciously, Olivia checks her finger for a ring.

"Everything alright?" Elliot crosses his arms across his chest.

"Actually, I just came back to talk to Cragen. I was at the park with my son, and I realized that he's the reason I should be doing this, not the reason that I shouldn't be," she tucks her hair behind her ear, and Olivia wants to tell her that her optimism, it will not last.

She cannot stop another murder; she cannot help the death of another child.

She wants to yell, too, scream loud and hard because she misses seeing Elliot across from her, she misses this and him and she doesn't want him falling into Jill and protecting her because she needs him to do that for her.

"I'll be in the car," she says as she gets up and heads out of the station, Elliot's head falling as he admits to himself that he too is disappointed.

&&&&&&

"You know I didn't replace you," he says after hours without communicating. She is finishing dinner, the table set for two, Elliot leaning against the wall of the kitchen as she places a bowl of pasta and one of salad in the middle of the table.

"Never said you did. I left, I understand," she confesses her mistake, and Elliot nods. "I never even said I wanted to come back."

He feels beaten.

"If you did, I mean, you could always talk to Cragen, Liv," he says the words timidly, and Olivia stops for a minute at the counter, her back to him. She takes a deep breath, her back arching as it fills with the air between them, fills with pieces of words still unspoken.

"Daniels is an asshole," she starts, spinning around, leaning up against the counter. "I don't mind the unit that much, but he – he's such an asshole," she shakes her head, looking away from him, and he goes to her slowly, looking her over as if he could see all the cuts and bruises that have been acquired.

"What did he do to you? Want me to talk to him?" She lets herself smile at the intensity of his words, at how she feels him protecting her.

"No." The word is firm, hard, telling. "No, El, he just needs to get his head out of his ass," she shrugs, and Elliot understands that her eyes are holding thoughts, secrets, dreams, that she cannot say.

He understands because his are holding them, too.

"He say something to you? Overstep anything?" He starts to feel the jealousy building within him, realizing that he no longer has all of her.

"Nothing like that, Elliot," she swears he looks relieved. And he is. He wants to let her know what he tells himself before they fall asleep, he wants to let her know that everything in his life has been made better because at 4:30am she is next to him, breathing in time with him.

She wants him to hold her, and she knows, in that one thought, that this has gone where it shouldn't. She knows that this is where she isn't supposed to be. Playing house, making dinner, sinking farther.

"Let's eat," she turns around and takes two pieces of chicken from the pan, placing them on a plate and carrying them over to the table.

Halfway through his dinner, halfway through his pasta and chicken and make believe game with Olivia, he says it, he leaps, his heart in his throat, he says, "Liv, you've been here for a while, you think about staying? Maybe move in for a while?"

The fork hits the plate with a loud clang, and she looks to him, her eyes searching him for his intention.

"Um, what?" She is caught off guard, unprepared, blindsided.

"I didn't mean to, or, I don't know," he sits back, putting down his fork, wiping his mouth with his napkin, "just thought maybe you could lease your apartment or something, sublet, even, maybe you'd like to have more than a few outfits here. It makes sense," he tried to defend the proposal.

"Oh, Elliot," she knows she has to do this alone. "El," she reaches across the table and takes his hand, runs her fingers throughout the valleys of his knuckles, "I, uh, or, actually – Elliot," she looks away from him, "I wanted to let you know I need to go," she can't be strong because here, with him, this is how she started to build a foundation again.

This is where she found everything that she thought she had lost. In these walls, in this place that she felt deserved the title of home.

But, she couldn't hide here forever.

"Go?" It was the only word he could find, and he pulled his hand out from hers.

"Elliot, what you've done for me, what you've – all of – for everything," she cannot finish her thoughts because she feels like this is goodbye, like without working with him or living with him this is saying goodbye.

Not forever, but for what they had.

"Stay," he begs, and she feels him breaking, because she is too.

"I can't stay here forever, I need to work on me, I need to not have to have you around, because you're not always going to be around."

He resists yelling that she is wrong.

"I want whatever is best for you, but this isn't – you can't just expect to pick up and leave and we'll talk every once in a while, I mean –"

He remembers what it was like when his children started walking, when he had no other choice than to watch them stumble and fall and do it on their own and he knows that now he has to do the same for Olivia.

He cannot hold her hand forever.

"This isn't because of you, Elliot, I don't want you to take this personally. I just need to know that I can do this on my own, that I can be okay out there," she motions towards the window, the outside world, all that they have hidden from.

He knows that she is right, but he isn't okay with it nonetheless.

"Oh, hey, yeah," he clears the emotion from his throat, blinks the tears from his eyes, shakes the disappointment from within him, "yeah, I know that. And I want whatever is going to be best for you, Liv, I do," he is trying to convince himself, too.

"I couldn't do this without you," she starts, but Elliot cannot do this. He refuses to make this a period. He refuses to accept the punctuation to what they were, he can't let them say goodbye.

"Hey, want to go get ice cream?" Elliot pushes himself up from the table and begins clearing the plates from the table.

"Elliot, El," she gets up and puts her hand on his arm, stopping him, "we can talk about this," she offers, and he gives her his smile.

"I don't think we can," he says honestly, because he knows that he cannot do it. "So, ice cream? Dairy Queen has these new things I wanted to try –"

"Elliot," she says his name slowly, catching the broken pieces of him in her eyes.

"C'mon," he is heading out the door, and all that is left for her to do is follow.

&&&&&&

"So, uh," he stands in the doorway, in the threshold of yesterday and tomorrow.

She says nothing, wraps her arms around him, her head nuzzling up to his neck, her tears falling into the well of his shoulder. He grabs at her, pulling her as close to him as she will go, and he kisses the top of her head with short, rapid kisses.

"I'm gonna miss you, kid," he says as she pulls away, and he kisses her forehead softly.

He wants to tell her that everything is going to be okay, but he knows that he cannot lie to her.

She missed him already.

"Call, anytime, if you need anything, or want to talk or anything like that, okay? Anytime." He needed her to know that he was still there, that she could not get rid of him so easily.

He didn't like saying goodbye to her.

He could do it in the morning because he used to know that he would see her at nite. He could do it at nite because he knew that he would see her in the morning.

But today, a mid afternoon on Sunday, he was assured of nothing. He did not know what he would find when he saw her again. He missed her right there, looking at her, standing before her.

"Thank you, Elliot, for everything. I love you so much," she said the words, but both knew their context, and Elliot hid the disappointment from her, and Olivia hid hers from him.

"Love you too, Olivia," he pulled her in for one last hug. "You're the strongest person I know," he clears his throat and places his hand on her cheek.

In another place, and at another time, this would mean so much more, the words, their meanings, they would all be different. He wonders, looking at her, if there will ever be a right place for all of that, for all of this.

"You need to go," she can't stand here with him, like this, forever, because she knows that she will fall apart.

And the words, for all that he knows, he cannot find any, because he is shaking, he knows that he is about to leave the one thing that kept him together, the one thing that made him get through this – the only person in the entire world that he considers his friend, the only person he knows he would die for, do anything to save, and when he goes to say something he can find no words, but rather he takes her in his mind, takes a picture of her tears and her eyes and her – and she does the same of him.

A picture says a thousand words.

&&&&&&

epilogue to follow.


	9. epilogue

**For All of This;**

_Epilogue._

He is sitting curled up in the late nite shadows of her apartment building, the first thing she sees as she turns the corner.

Without words, she goes to him, sits down in front of him, and reaches for his back, rubbing her hand up and down quickly.

"El," her voice was a soft whisper to bring him back to her, "El."

His head raised at the sound of her voice, and in the haze between the conscious and the unconscious his mind played in the possibilities of where they could be; a quiet bed & breakfast in the mountains, a soft hammock on the beach, a lazy Sunday morning on the couch.

Clearing his throat he asks, "where've you been", and he pretends that he is not jealous. His eyes, they blink open a few times, transitioning him back into this world slowly, back from the color of his dreams, and for the first time, when he sees her eyes, he has to push himself back up against the wall for all they hold.

When he looks into Olivia's eyes and realizes that in them he sees their unborn child of a future and potential and an answer to all those questions they've both held, and when he is afraid of exactly what he sees, he needs a second. A minute. An hour. A year. Forever.

He wants to tell her how much he misses finding her on his couch at 2am unable to sleep. He wants to tell her that sometimes he would linger in the doorway and listen to her breathing. He wants to tell her that when she left, he couldn't sleep.

"We were trying to rap some things up on a case," Olivia explains her whereabouts, and they both pretend, with a smile, their eyes locked, revealing their secrets, their souls, their hearts, they pretend, locked inside of each other, that this does not hurt as much as it does.

Her hands, they are itching, her headache, it has moved in permanently, and she realizes for every reason that she has to take a drink, she has one singular reason why she should not, and he is sitting, cobalt blue eyes, hunched over in front of her door at 3am.

"What are you doing here, Elliot?" She asks slowly.

"Isn't it obvious, Olivia?" He lets his head fall back before pulling it back up, and with a smile he says, "I just find your apartment door and the floor outside of it so damn comfortable, irresistible, really. That and my cable went out and I want to see what happened on tonite's episode of Murphy Brown."

"Elliot," she gives him a soft laugh and then gets up off of the floor before offering him her hand, something that does not often happen.

He says nothing as she unlocks her door and follows her inside, where Olivia slips off her shoes before heading to the couch, and he, like always, follows her.

"I had Chinese tonite," he starts, "and my oranges, they all have the peels still on them, and there is a jar of half eaten baby dills in the fridge." He runs his hands over his face, not looking at Olivia, because he can't. He doesn't understand when this happened, when he walked into the bathroom and instantly realized that it didn't smell like flowers, when he missed her underwear in the laundry basket, he doesn't know when that all went from nothing to something and he doesn't understand how he never saw it until everything was gone.

He remembers Kathy, how he could have gone back, but he didn't feel like he could, like he could mend it. But, when he noticed that in his Chinese there was no white rice, no sweet & sour chicken and no extra fortune cookie, he knew he had to get her back.

"And your shampoo, that pink stuff that smells like flowers and citrus –"

She seems stronger now than she really is, and he doesn't know how he should take that, doesn't know if he should be thankful that she has survived without him or upset by her independence. He does know, however, that nothing really goes away, and even if it has been a few months since her last drink, she still wants another one.

Part of him wants to believe that he is part of the reason that she does not take it.

"You want my shampoo, Elliot? I have an extra bottle if you'd like to have it," she jokes, but he doesn't laugh, he is too busy concentrating on breathing. "Oh, okay, not that kind of thing," she lets out a sigh. "What did your fortune say?"

"Today is the yesterday of tomorrow," he breathes out.

"In bed? That doesn't make much sense."

"Maybe I should just, um, maybe I should just go, huh?" He is suddenly uncomfortable in his skin, itching, he gets up from the couch, he is shaking, sweating, his head, it starts pounding, and his shirt feels like it's strangling him.

He is in withdraw.

"Um, yeah, okay," Olivia nods, and she feels him and for him, she knows everything he is feeling, because she feels it from him, but at the same time, she doesn't remember who she is anymore, she is trying to find that among all the pieces that she has collected, putting herself back together again was going to be something she had to at least try on her own. She needed to know, the skeptic in her, she needed to know that if everything came crashing down again, that she would be able to hold herself up.

He calls to her, when he is leaving, without looking back, "call me tomorrow, maybe we can grab dinner or something," and as he's leaving he hears her say okay.

And alone, she goes back to her room, slips off her sweater, takes out her earrings. Alone she walks into her bathroom, throws some cold water on her face, and when she catches her reflection in the mirror, behind her, in the corner, there is what is left of one of the orange candles from Elliot.

"Elliot," she squeezes her eyes shut, falls back in a sigh, her body, it aches, her head, she is accustomed to it now, her hands – they feel foreign, and when she realizes why, when she realizes it is because in the past several weeks she has become so accustomed to having her hand within his, she turns and runs out of the apartment, down the stairs, out into the night sky, out under the stars and the planets and all those little pieces of life and yesterday and tomorrow.

"Elliot!" She screams to him as he turns around the corner, but he does not hear, and she is sprinting now, running after him and this and she is trying to remember what it was like before the instant that they had fallen into each other. "Elliot!"

He stops, his body goes rigid, and he turns around to see her standing there, caught in the moonlight, reflected in the stars and light of the universe.

Looking at her he is filled with the feeling an astronaut must get when he is in space, looking down at the earth.

He wonders when she became the world.

"Liv," he walks to her, and she is jumping up and down, trying to keep warm, "where the hell are your shoes?" He laughs, and she shakes her head.

"I ran out of the apartment, I locked myself out again, I didn't have time to get my shoes, I didn't want to miss you, you're going to have to let me back in," she is rambling, and Elliot shakes his head.

"I don't have your key."

"What? Yes you do." She wants to think that she isn't put off by this.

"I took it off my key ring to avoid randomly breaking and entering."

"If you have a key, it's not breaking and entering, it's just entering," she informs him, "what we have to do now, now that you don't have a key – that is breaking and entering."

"I can't believe you left with no shoes on, are you insane? Do you know what you could get from these streets?" He is laughing.

"I told you I was in a hurry and I thought you would have a key! I didn't think it would become a situation."

"Oh, so now the foot fungus you are about to catch is my fault?"

"Give me your shoes." She looks at him with a smile, and he wants to remember her like this, trapped in the lights of the solar system, forever.

"So I can get foot fungus? No thank you, you're the one who-"

"Okay, okay, I get it." She rolls her eyes as Elliot takes a step towards her and puts his hand on her back.

"Get on my feet," he looks away, like he is bothered, but Olivia can see his smile.

"Are you crazy?"

"No, are you? Ms. I lock myself out of my apartment barefoot in February. I think that you are in no place to challenge my sanity." And then, like a little girl dancing on her father's feet, Olivia steps up onto Elliot's feet, her eyes falling just below his nose.

"Elliot," she starts, the tone of her voice changing, "did you honestly come all the way over here at 3am and sleep outside my door to tell me you missed having dinner with me?" She wonders if anyone can see them, her pressed up against him, her arms wrapped around him to keep her balance.

"What if I did? Is that so bad?" He challenges.

"Well, no, but it just seems like, seems like…" she trails off before erupting into laughter.

"What?" He starts laughing along with her, readjusting his hands on her back so that she doesn't slip.

"Are we seriously going to have a conversation like this?" She laughs into his neck, putting her head on his shoulder.

"You're the one who locked yourself out, sweetheart," his voice is sarcastic, joking, light.

"There's a bench over there," she moves her head in the direction of a bench a few feet off, "you can carry me there."

"Um, excuse me?" Olivia steps back off of his feet and looks to him expectantly.

"You're the one over here yelling about foot fungus. Now turn around."

"Really? I'm much more effective this way," and she is thankful for every line in his face drawn out by his smile.

"Elliot Stabler, shut up – and turn around," they are both laughing as he spins around and Olivia jumps up onto his back.

"Ugh," he groans as she wraps her legs around his waist.

"Over there," she points.

"Yes ma'am." Elliot laughs in an English accent.

"I could get used to this," she teases, and as Elliot sets her down on the bench he tells her that it's better if she doesn't.

For a moment they are silent, and then Olivia spins sideways, putting her legs over Elliot's lap and then burying them inside his coat. He throws his hands in the air with a smile, resignation, and then they take a few moments to collect themselves.

For all of this, he could not imagine spending 15 minutes without her.

"What'd you really have to say, Elliot?"

"I wanted to tell you that I'm really proud of you, for all of this." He clears his throat.

"Don't make me sound like a victim, okay?" Her tone is flat, and Elliot nods, understanding.

"Maybe I did just miss having dinner with you. Maybe I did just miss finding you on the couch watching TV at 2am. Maybe I missed you asking me if I would stay with you, for a little longer."

"Elliot, we both know –"

"What? That we're a bunch of middle aged statistics? That this could be nothing more than us running away from what we are? You want a drink, Olivia, right this second, you want to take a drink?" He prays for the right answer.

"Right this second?" His hand begins rubbing her leg, and she puts her hand on top of his to stop him, "no, I don't." Her voice is strong, and he is thankful. "You can smile, it's a compliment," she says slowly, and he laughs, looking to her with smiling eyes.

Each line on his face, another thing, another memory of what makes him happy.

"I want to come out at 2am and find you on the couch crying at some show about aliens. I want your sorry excuses for pickles in my fridge next to the mangled, stripped oranges. Your candles, I want them half burnt all around the bath tub so that I trip over them, and your pink shampoo, I like it half empty in my shower because that means that someone's there, using it."

"Elliot, you're just not used to not having someone there, you need time –"

"I don't miss someone being there. I got used to waking up alone, Olivia, I dealt with it and handled it, but it's all those other things, your things, that I can't handle not being there."

"Well," she starts, letting out a breath she has been holding for forever, "since I'm locked out, I guess going back to your place would be okay."

His laugh, it is laced with relief as he gets up from the bench, standing with his back turned to her.

"Get on," he instructs her and Olivia stands up on the bench and climbs onto Elliot's back, locking her legs around his waist, her arms draped over her shoulders, his hands locked under her butt.

"Elliot Stabler?" She whispers his name into his neck as they head down the street towards where his car is parked.

"Yes, Ms. Benson?"

"You really just came over to tell me to tell me you missed me?" She was humbled by it, moved by it, thrown off of her center by it, and she laid her head on his shoulder as they continued on.

She wished the world could see them.

"And to bring you home," he answers, but he feels like she is still disappointed, and, for reasons beyond her, she too can feel the disappointment.

"No one's ever done that before." She moves so that her chin is resting on his shoulder, and as they get closer to the car, he stops, standing in front of it, Olivia still on his back, and he wonders if this is what people mean when they say that your life falls into place.

"Hey Olivia?" He clears his throat, looking off across the street, and before Olivia gets the chance to respond he says, with a smile, adding another wrinkle to the memories, "has anyone ever told you they were in love with you while they were giving you a piggy back ride?"

&&&&&

finished.


End file.
